Hi Brody,
I’m glad to hear that you got the problem fixed!
How long did it take them to diagnose the problem?
Try not to be pissed about the whole thing.
Your boat starts now, and from what I can read into your posts other than this the boat is good otherwise. And remember, you bought a used boat, you got a much lower price than had you bought a brand new one. When you buy something used it most always has some issue. Not always true, but it is the norm.
The guy you bought it from told you how good it was, but those spark plugs tell a tale on the previous owner, again, I’ve never seen a set up plugs that looked like that, and I’ve been working on cars, trucks and dirt bikes for 40 years. As House said, “People lie”. That includes lies of omission.
And one of my favorites: “When everything plausible has been eliminated, whatever remains however implausible, has to be the answer”
Mycroft Holmes-Sherlock‘s brother.
Yeah this is the pot calling the kettle black, because I had a similar situation recently with a vehicle wherein I had a $8000 repair bill and when I looked it over when I got home there were fender bolts missing or hanging down loose. I was not happy about that I can tell you!!! So I get the coil pack bolts missing.. I also get the fact the stunt (?) was broken and you had to bring to their attention. So now you know, right in front of them, open everything up and look it over and don’t be shy about pointing things out. As my friend likes to remind me when things don’t go as planned, “experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want”.
No one is going to work on it with the love and care you do, as you paid $$$$$ for this boat.
Also, that 1 in 1000 thing... it can happen for sure. Stators fail mainly due to heat, heat caused by excessive load, in this case it is probable that it was charging load that got it hot and degraded the winding, as in a battery with a bad cell and the stator is constantly charging the battery plus whatever other loads were on the system. The regulator / rectifier is water cooled so it could withstand a lot of load. I’m not a see sayer by any means, but, I’m not surprised by this. In my previous post I talked about how motorcycle ignitions, specifically the old SEM / Motoplat stators would, when they failed, get hot and the bike would die as the broken wire in the winding would lift and separate thereby opening the circuit, which can be damn exciting at 50mph going across the desert! You‘d have to sit and wait about an hour and the bike would restart. It sounds to me like your situation was the reverse, the circuit was barely / or not made when the motor was cold, and once the motor ran and your stator got warm the connection was made more solid and that’s why it would start the rest of the day once started. Just a guess, but plausible.
And the $1000 in labor sounds like one day in the mechanics bay. For what’s worth, consider the time it took to trouble shoot the problem, R&R the engine to gain access to the stator for replacement, then test the engine, and, you now have a guarantee on the work and the parts that were used. How much is your time worth? And had you done the repairs you would not have a guarantee on anything as electrical parts are not warrantied. I’m betting that if you had the manual, multimeter, and the connection tools you could have found the bad OHM readings in the stator wiring. Still, unless you have a hoist and some other specific tools you could probably not have made these repairs yourself.
So, to you, my jet boating brethren, I say be happy that the boat is fixed, go forth and use the heck out of it ad enjoy it!!!
Once you have that permagrin back on your face from successful days of boating, you can go through all of the electrical connections, check, clean and grease them all so as to prevent any preventable electrical issues from coming up in the future.
I thank you for sharing your experience with your boat so that indeed someone else may benefit from your experience, that’s what part of these forums are all about.
Best of luck! And I hope that you and yours enjoy your boat and its great starting ability!!
Let us know how the test goes!!