Starting 315 Yanmar

[Serenity]

The 315 in my 28TE is 2 years old and less than a 100 hours on it. The Yanmar was a replacement for the Beast. When I start the engine, 9 times out of 10 it fires right up. However, on the 10 th time it does nothing. If I rock the shift lever back and forth several times it will start. I have replaced the neutral switch off of the transmission, but that didn't solve my problem. Any ideas or thoughts?

[sweetwater]

Have you tried not rocking the shifter, just playing with the ignition switch? If it only gets better playing with the shifter I would think it has to be that neutral safety switch. Isnt the switch located under the shifter? Other than that, I would suspect a bad ground or starter solenoid...But moving the shifter would not effect that at all. I will think more about it..

[jleonard]

Your linkage might need to be adjusted to make sure it is actually in neutral at the tranny when in neutral at the shifter. It sounds like it might be an RCH off thus sometimes giving you trouble.
Usually the cables can be adjusted as they are threaded on the ends and you can make small length adjustments with the nuts to get it more perfect.
Some of the shifters have ball detents and if yours does you need to make sure the detent is strong enough so you can feel it when you get to neutral. Then adjust cable length to get the tranny lever centered in neutral.

[Dudley]

I had a similar problem with starting and finally isolated the problem to the starter relay. I have the 6LPA-STP. The starter relay is quite a bit smaller than a starter solenoid for a car. The Yanmar relay is $75 but final cost is $89 with shipping and tax. In the end it took two people to start the engine. One to turn the starter switch to start and the second to tap on the relay. We isolated the problem by shorting out the neutral start switch which is found on the engine. There are no wires going to the gear shift so we found that the switch is on the engine, left front side. Then we replaced the starting switch. The switch is $127.35. When the engine still did not start we realized it must be the relay. You can short the two big leads on the relay and it will start. The reason we had so much trouble finding the problem was that the mechanic said that when the relay went bad it would not work at all. Mine would work on 1 to 8 trys until it finally had to be tapped with a hammer . The relay is above the starter on the right front of the engine. The original relay is grounded to the engine but the new relay is isolated from the engine with rubber washers and has its own ground wire which you simply attach to one of the two bolts that hold the relay to the engine block. The upper bolt was fine but the lower bold engine block threads were so corroded that I had to buy a 6mm tap and clean out the threads. New longer bolts come with the relay as well as two washers which you must use to keep the bolt heads from grinding into the rubber isolation washers.

[RobS]

... It sounds like it might be an RCH off....

J, I guess you keep one of these in your toolbox?

RCH Ruler.bmp

I had a similar problem with starting and finally isolated the problem to the starter relay...

Dudley,
Thanks for sharing your problem and resolution. Good info there.

[jleonard]

I better get one of those.

[Serenity]

I better get one of those.

And I thought it was only a myth.

[Serenity]

As it turns out my tranny cable is worn out and needs to be replaced. As per the "Master" Rob, I am out by 9 RCH's. The boat will be hauled on Tuesday to have the prop re-pitched, only out by 100-120 RCH. and the cable will be replaced them

[Serenity]

It has been almost 3 months since I had the tranny cable adjusted at the control/throttle at the helm. There wasn't enough slack at the tranny to make an adjutment Haven't had an issue since.

[DougSea]

Always good when a fix actually works!

[Serenity]

Doug, I hope your fix is as simple.

[Russell]

What does the "R" stand for in RCH?

[jleonard]

What does the "R" stand for in RCH?

Red

[DougSea]

Doug, I hope your fix is as simple.

Thanks Max! I updated my "Sonny is down" post. Things are looking up!