www.iFourWinns.com

Hi All,

Well...beautiful weather in CT for Labor Day Weekend...Kids gone for the day with their Aunt and Uncle...So the admiral and I decide to head to the river with the boat.

Get the boat to the ramp, all loaded up for a fun day, climb aboard, hit the key and...nuthin'.
Check the neutral safety...nuthin...check the kill switch...nothin...check the fuse...fine.

battery is fine (tilt works, blower works, etc.) Starter not even ticking.

Pull the trailer out of the water and drive home. After I cool off, I go and try to diagnose (with my very limited mechanic ability). I finally discover that the main wire assembly has loosened up where it attaches to the fuse panel on the engine. It is a bizarre rubber connector held on by a hose clamp. When you tighten the hose clamp too much, it slides the piece off. Nice design! Finally found the sweet tension spot to get it to stay connected, and she fired up!

Anyone one else have this issue? There seems like there should be a better setup/design.

Thanks for listenin to my rant!

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1998 Horizon RX
Haddam, CT

It's no consolation, but that's very common occurence; they changed it on later engines (not sure exactly when; it was like that on my '99 5.7GSi, my '04 5.7GXi engine doesn't have it). They moved the loose connection up to the dash instead!

Graham

Sorry you had a frustrating weekend, but I appreciate the post. It might save me some trouble-shooting down the road. I had a similar scenario this weekend. Had the boat at the neighbors cabin for the weekend. Spent the morning/early afternoon pulling the kids around on tubes. Around dinner time, the wives decide they are ready for a slow cruise. I go to start the boat and nothing. Similar to you, I have power (just added dual-batt system this year so I'm thinking a I have a loose connection at first), fuses are good, check the lanyard...it's still attached. So my neighbor pokes around and goes over the same list as me. He finally says, check your safety lanyard again. I look at it and sure enough, it's barely clipped on. It looked like it was on, but was not actually fully on. A little embarrasing , but we were back up and running without too much wasted time.

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'99 Horizon 200

Me too! Uncovered the boat, turned on the blower, loaded up family and friends, pushed away from the dock, turn the key and nothing. Ran through the same steps, even checked the breaker on the helm - nothing. Turned the 'Add a Battery' switch from On to Both, tried again and it fired right up. Day saved by dual battery setup.

After it fired up I found that the manual bilge switch had been left on since the previous weekend. First time the starting battery was run down to the point where the starter wouldn't even click.

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2007 Horizon 200
4.3L GXi/ SX 225 HP