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hi everyone jeff cote here with

boatingtechtalk.com

so we've got a question from a fellow

boater uh cell boater with a beneteau

343

i've worked on a lot of these boats

actually uh pretty awesome

steven asks jeff i had the misfortune of

crossing the leads on my starter battery

so steven do

themselves but someone did

what do you look for when this happens

and occurs so

further context stephen says jeff i had

the starter repaired

yeah that would have started with that

the battery terminal fuse replaced

but the alternator is still not working

and then he goes on to say

steven says investigating the exciter

for the alternator this weekend and

looking for more fuses

that's unfortunate and honestly my heart

goes out to you because

it's one of those things that can happen

it's a simple mistake

but it's a mistake that can never happen

right there's a lot of things in life

that aren't too hard to do but they can

never happen

reversing the polarity on the battery

and putting the positive to the negative

and vice versa is a recipe for disaster

as this fellow boater is experiencing so

what are the things i would look like

but first of all i want to put this into

context we're entering

a world of theoretical here i have

personally never been

involved or have i resolved a problem

that someone

told me that they had reversed the

polarity on their boat

um and that they had put positive on

negative and negative on positive

so where would i look you're absolutely

right starter is the first thing because

that's

actually what's connected to the battery

start a solenoid of course

so probably the start itself is probably

fine because it's not connected

i would assume but the starter solenoid

itself is maybe something that would be

need to look at the alternator for sure

because

the alternator is actually going to be

connected

to the starter solenoid poise so that

actually

alternators actually saw the reverse

polarity for sure so it actually

was connected reverse polarity so that's

one issue

the other issue might be the gauges now

the gauges normally only light up

if you turn the ignition key on right

so if the ignition key was not turned on

then the gauges would be fine

because the gauges are only energized

and should only be energized if you

have the ignition key turned on not

necessarily i'm not talking about

starting the engine but just simply

going

to an on state different boats have

different systems some have push buttons

by the end of the day they can achieve

it with a key they can achieve it with a

button but if the gauges weren't

energized then you might have been fine

now the gauges are connected to what

they're connected to sensors the sensors

on the engines are actually again

not connected to the starter solenoid

itself

they're going to be connected to the

gauges so

luckily those gauges are probably fine

on your boat as well

i would assume again haven't never lived

it and if any of you have

lived this experience we all learn

from not our own mistakes but the

mistakes of others and i truly believe

that

uh the reason i'm here today sharing

with you is because

many of you invite me on your boat and

i'm here solving problems

and as we solve problems i remember

those problems

and i give back by just sharing what i

learned and it's the same thing why the

senior technician is better than a

junior technician

and even if they were the same person

it's just the junior technicians don't

have as much knowledge

from experience as they would 10 years

later and so if they've got an open mind

and hopefully all of us do as voters

then the trick is to keep on learning

both from our mistakes and the mistakes

of others so that we don't have history

repeat itself

as too often then i would start looking

at

what else is connected to that battery

you know

are you having battery combiners that

might have been

energized you know that would have been

a big problem

so battery combiners can actually sense

on one post a voltage now some of them

actually are smart and if they sense

less than a certain amount of voltage

they're not going to trigger but i would

wonder like is my battery combiner smart

enough to know to not combine to a dead

battery

which would be zero volts so that would

be something else

look at maybe seeing any sort of battery

combiner connections

the other issue is your alternator might

be connected to

um a battery isolator so i'd worry about

the battery isolator as well

again all theoretical don't know never

seen that so i'm just sort of

shooting here from the hip as to what i

would look for

i'd also look at the battery charger

that is also something i would look at

battery charger would be another issue

to look at and you've got to be curious

you've got to be inquisitive it sounds

like steven's doing the right thing he's

sort of

going in a little bit like when there's

a fire on a boat my recommendation is

you go in and you go wide

right you can't go in laser focus

because you're going to miss

if you know what you're looking for

you're not going to see the obvious

so you got to go in there and go oh what

about this what about that what about

this what about that

and you want to go broad so that you

catch it all

right as opposed to going in there

thinking you know exactly what you're

doing

and you're so laser focused that you

lose sight of certain things

in around there that you never

anticipated and there's nothing wrong

with not knowing

but the whole purpose of the

troubleshooting is to look for anything

that you didn't think about

so it's a great question for stephen it

does happen i always warn my technicians

that i would not be happy if it did but

you know one day it's probably going to

happen to us too

because it's inevitable that we all make

mistakes and we can't be too hard on

ourselves

we just don't ever want to repeat it and

i appreciate steven for sharing because

through the mistake that happened on his

boat he can prevent someone else from

having the same mistake

so thanks for asking steven and thanks

for watching and by the way

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