Hot Wires????

[Abe's Rocket]

All...

When cranking over my 76' 200hp evinrude, the positive battery cable, from the motor to battery, will start to smoke and get extremely hot. I have never seen this before and can't imagine its a good thing.

Any suggestions / ideas are appreciated.

Abe's Rocket.

1973 Seacraft 20ft cc.

[optiguy]

The first thing you should do is clean all the connections on the Batt leads. Especially the ground to the motor and Batt and the Hot to the starter. Usually hot wires are from high resistance due to weak connections.
Bill

[Abe's Rocket]

or a weak battery???

[ScottM]

or a weak battery???

No. You wouldn't have a resistance problem if your battery was weak. Check your main connections, clean the terminals, and clean/check the connections to your starter. That starter needs a lot of juice to crank.

[Dave Hirshberg]

It may not be just your connection at the motor. If you have a battery switch in the system the bad connections could be there as well. If It looks green on the ends its best to cut back the cable a bit and put new terminals on.And, if the switch is old or origional its internal connections can deteriorate as well. You may need to replace it too. Frequent problem on older wiring.

[FlytheCoop]

Sometimes the whole battery cable has deteriorated and needs to be replaced...I had the same thing happen. I replaced the battery leads and the boat started much quicker and the wires never got hot again. The wiring was probably 15 years old at the time.

[RS]

Fly... is probably right. The heat is usually generated where the high resistance is located.

[Abe's Rocket]

Thanks for all your feedback, while looking deeper into the issue i noticed that the cables were completely shot. A buddy of mine gave me a spare set and I am back in business...ahhh the joys.