"jason" wrote in message
om...
Have a 83 mercruiser i/o 3.0l in a wellcraft. did a little maintance
on it getting ready for the season. The starter was acting up last
year and i pulled it and put in a new one. It is cranking fine, hits
good and hard every time. But i was getting no fire. I stated at the
plugs and traced back to see if i can see a spark. ended up at a bad
coil. Pulled it and heard the swishing sound, so unless the coil on a
marine motor is diffrent it's eletolitic fluid menbrane had busted.
replaced it with a coil form auto zone. Here is my problem, we still
have no spark
Pulled the volt meter out and found this:
With the key off:
we have nothing on the + 0.0v
we have nothing on the - 0.0
With the key in the on position:
we have 12v on the +
!!! we have 12v on the -
From my understanding, and without a service/maintenance manual on
hand,I believe this to be very wrong. Has something changed with the
starter cylanoid?
with all the wires on the cylanoid, there are only 2 that fit the
smaller poles. Tried reversing them, and got no cranking. So they are
in the correct postition. I did notice a momentary firing when i first
started the engine after putting the starter in, but nothing since
then. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
TIA, JAW

I gather that you are looking at the coil terminals. One lead, the + is
connected to the ign switch, the other the - post is connected to the points
in the Distributor, or the electronic ignition module. The - terminal is
pulled low then high in time to fire the cyl the rotor is positioned under
in the dist cap. The rate of change in the primary voltage determines the
secondary (along with turns ratio).