Massey

Hey guys I have a ProBoat Miss Elam + !/8 scale that has an anoying issue with its engine. After a few minutes of running the engine dies and will not restart. I am not engesting water through the carb this I know. I think that I am getting water in my coil or the magneto and this is shorting it all out and keeping me from running. The Engine does not have any spark after this happens. After a few days on the shelf everything works just fine again till about 2 or 3 laps then it is dead again. I cannot see any physical dammage to the coil or the magneto. Has anyone else had this problem with a Zen engine or the Proboats that use this engine?

Massey

OLD_SLOW and in the WAY

run an extra wire from grey coil mount to ground. and tie black wire in a knot so it dont ground out

Massey

My coil seems sealed up really good tho a little could be comming in though the coil wire. I will drop a few drops of CA inside there.

Fastrat, are you talking about the black coil wire that goes to the spark plug? If so I cant tie it up there is not enough wire to do that. As for the black wires off the magneto to the kill button I though that there may have been a short there so I unplugged that wire and the engine would still not start. That black wire has good insulation on it and really does not touch anything it kinda hangs from the switch to the magneto.

Massey

dougaldy

This may be way off base, but I had somewhat of a similar problem with my brackets being anodized. Sometimes it would fire then die. Do you have anything anodized

Scott

BMAD01

Scott, I had the same exact problem with Bonsi anodised mounts. Sometimes the engine would run, sometimes not. When it did run it would breakup at high rpms. I retapped the grey coil mount holes to get rid of the anodising - end of problem. Brian

Massey

Nope no anodizing on this boat except for the clutch mounts. Just on nasty problem of this thing going dead all of a sudden and not wanting to restart till it gets all nice and dry. I will try to ground my coil better and see if that helps. I have not been able to get the magneto off my engine yet as one of the screws wants to strip.

Massey

BMAD01

Massey, Yep! Try grounding the secondary coil better like Fastrat said. I've run a crimp on connecor/jumper wire from the ground tab on the coil, to one of the cooling flange mounting bolts. That way your grounding directly to the engine case. Good luck, Brian

tazmaniaboats

hello massey
i used to have problems on a cat that seem like yours and i followed a small procedure spray a good spray before 1 st run.check the red coil space between coil and flywheel the two steel fingers[coil] must not touch flywheel .i drilled a hole just under the flywheel to avoid water being trapped in there[hole in case].grey coil relocation bracket. grease or spray in red wire .
hope these help

Flabum

What are you using to check the spark? Are you using the spark plug? If so, could be a bad spark plg....... shorting or opening internally when it gets hot.

Massey

I thought it could be the spark plug but I also tried the human test to see if it would knock me on my tail and I didnt even get a tickle. After it all dried out again everything worked good. It was a rainy day here today so the boat didnt get into the water again maybe later this week I can give it a spin. I have sanded down the areas that contact the block on both the coil and the block retightened everything and checked the magneto finally. I reinstalled the magneto and adjusted it so that it does not drag on the flywheel but still picks up the signal. I fired it up after I got it in the boat and all is good for now. Lets see what happens next time at the lake. Thanks for your input everyone and if this dont work I am going to make a grounding strap. I didnt today cause I didnt feel like going to the autopart store to get some solderless terminals (I am out of the kind I need).

Massey