98 290 DA - port engine 5.0 stalled

Little Ducky

Well-Known Member
Jun 5, 2017
2,652
Dickson, TN / Chattanooga, TN
Boat Info
1998 290 Sundancer
Engines
Twin EFI 5.0L w/Alphas
Kohler 4kW
Had a weird thing happen over the weekend.

Was up on plane zipping along and it felt like an anchor was tossed when I realized the port engine stalled. The RPM gauge was stuck at 4K so I was like "oh no". Once both throttles were back in neutral I restarted the port motor and it ran like nothing happened and I continued on my way w/o further incident. Water temp, oil pressure, and volts were all reading normally with no alarms when the incident occurred. To add I had pretty much a full tank of fuel which I've been boating on for the last 3 weekend.

Chalk it up to a one time thing ....... or is it a tell tale sign of something failing?
 
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If you have a local mechanic that won't beat you up for a printout they could probably pull the ecm codes to see if anything reported.

Battery/charging system is ok? I know you said volts were steady but if they went too high or low the ECM will shut down (they like steady voltages)
 
If you have a local mechanic that won't beat you up for a printout they could probably pull the ecm codes to see if anything reported.

Battery/charging system is ok? I know you said volts were steady but if they went too high or low the ECM will shut down (they like steady voltages)

I'll have to see about getting it scanned to see if anything pops up.
 
Kinda guessing, but a couple of things that could cause that:

  • Fuel pump - I had one go bad once and the engine just shutdown - only it would not restart.
  • You have Alpha I's, so could be the shift interrupt switch getting flaky - any strange behavior while shifting?
  • Oil pressure switch - but you would have gotten an alarm also.

All just guesses at this point.
 
Kinda guessing, but a couple of things that could cause that:
  • Fuel pump - I had one go bad once and the engine just shutdown - only it would not restart.
  • You have Alpha I's, so could be the shift interrupt switch getting flaky - any strange behavior while shifting?
  • Oil pressure switch - but you would have gotten an alarm also.
All just guesses at this point.

That's a good thought right there. I'll put this at the top of my list.

I was thinking a few weeks ago it was not doing its thing while shifting around the dock. When shifting from forward to reverse it sounded like I didn't use the clutch if driving a manual car..... I quickly found neutral.
 
That's a good thought right there. I'll put this at the top of my list.

I was thinking a few weeks ago it was not doing its thing while shifting around the dock. When shifting from forward to reverse it sounded like I didn't use the clutch if driving a manual car..... I quickly found neutral.

There's a testing procedure for the interrupt switch, its in the drive manual if you have that. The interrupt is actually for shifting out of gear, it momentarily stalls the engine to take the pressure off the undercut gear so you can pull it out of gear. But, like Bill said it could get flaky and just shut the motor down if it is going.
 
electric fuel pumps will stop working then start too. had one go bad on my 95 290, one day last year starboard engine wouldn,t start trouble shot it back to no fuel tapped on fuel pump started working then while engine was running tapped it again would stop, so don't completely rule out the fuel pump and for the record the connections were all good. could also be the fuel pressure sender for the fuel pump starting to go
 
I had exact thing happen to me last week. Went out and port just died. Restarted and was fine and got in. Next day went out and same thing. Jumped in motor bay and had wide crank. No gas. So it's the pump. I just changed that one 3 months ago but they do go bad.
 

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