no fuel solenoid voltage to engines or generator

[James Calhoun]

Good morning all, looking for some help for a serious problem I recently had at sea with my 1990 Sea Ray 420 with 3208 Cats. On my trip from Puerto Rico to Merritt Island, FL, 40 miles north of the Dom Rep/Haiti border (not a place to have problems), I was about to switch from my port engine to my starboard engine. When I started the starboard engine and it ran for about 10 seconds, both engines and the generator shut down all of the sudden. I smelled smoke and ran to the engine room and hatch and had some smoke in the engine room but not much. As I tried to get the engines started again, I had crank from the port engine but would not start and nothing from the starboard. The generator would start but when the preheat was released, it would die. After further examination, the entire starboard ignition system was dead and no green light from the key switch in the salon panel. Searched the engine room and no sign of burnt wires or components. What I decided to do was hot wire the fuel solenoids from the batteries and the port engine started and ran fine. I did the same to the starboard but had to manually jump the starter solenoid and got it running. I still had everything charging and everything else on the boat works fine. The boat ran for 5 days like this and I just made it home on monday, 19 July. We searched hi and low for any problems, burnt wires or components and can find nothing wrong. After some homework, someone told me to check the halon system and after looking at the halon schematic, it does control the fuel solenoids and ignition systems and I cannot imagine what else could shut down the ignition, both engine and the gen set. Can anyone help me with the location of the control module of this system or any other info about it. Looked under the dash and tried to follow the wires from the dash mounted control but could not locate anything. Is this a common problem? Any other ideas of what could cause this. The recommended marine electrician that I trust is away for 2 to 3 weeks and I would like to find out what I can until he returns. Please help if you can, Thank You in advance!!

 

[fwebster]

Check the easiest problem first.........look at the gauge on the Halon tank. If the bottle leaks down to the red area, the fire control module shuts down the ignitions to the main engines and the generator.

You can also switch thew fire control system to "stand by" and that bypasses the Halon system and lets you crank the engines.

 

[James Calhoun]

We checked the bottle and it was in the green. Its been there awhile so I might need to do a manual check on the bottle. I will look at it again today and look for the stand by switch and try again. The baffling thing to me is the smoke, and it was in the engine room, so am wondering if the main module of the system fried so I want to find the box and inspect it. Thanks for the reply.

 

[James Calhoun]

Oh yea, there is also a circuit breaker thing right next to the indicator on the dash and did press that, thinking maybe it was a reset or something, but didnt effect anything.

 

[James Calhoun]

Oh yea, there is also a circuit breaker thing right next to the indicator on the dash and did press that, thinking maybe it was a reset or something, but didnt effect anything.

I just checked the bypass switch on the halon system and it was already in bypass mode so I want locate the module and take a look at it. Anyone know where that thing is.