2000 GT-40 won't fire

[wcherashore]

I have a 2000 Air with a GT-40 engine. The boat has under 300 hours (about 275) of which 75 have been put on since July. It is also worth mentioning that the boat went in for annual service in June... I took the boat out last night and the engine would turn over, but not fire if that makes sense. I had just filled up the tank after my last session the prior week (we had bad weather so I didn't take it out for a week). I tried to jump it, but that resulted in no change from the symptom already described. The battery is showing 12v power on the dash anyhow so that shouldn't be the issue.

Help! Its been pouring rain and windy for 1.5 weeks and it was pure glass this am....

[intrlaz]

I just went through this recently, and there are a ton of posts matching your symptons. If you have good crank, I would start by going to an auto store and buying a fuel pressure gauge. Test with the key on, engine off to make sure you are getting around 39 psi at the rail.

DanielC has a lot of great info regarding the gt-40. Here is the link to his post about checking pressure. http://planetnautique.com/index.php?...=fuel+pressure

Try that and let us know

[WakeSlayer]

Lanyard?

[wcherashore]

The first items I checked were that the throttle was in neutral and the lanyard was engaged. I could tell it wasn't the lanyard connection because when you try to start the engine and the lanyard isn't fixed the engine fires if you will then is quickly killed. In this instance, the engine turned over, but didn't fire if that makes sense.....

[DanielC]

I would do this first:
http://planetnautique.com/index.php?...light=ignition
If that checks out good, do the fuel pressure check.

[bobchris]

well you don't have to waist your money on the cheap tester from the autoparts store all you have to do is hold the wire about an ich or two from the block to see the spark jump from the coil wire. because if it's not jumping atleast and inch then it's not strong enough to start with. But once you verify you have spark from the coil then you need to make sure you have it at the plug. So remove one plug attach the wire and have the electrode of the plug resting on the block and crank the motor and look for spark should be nice and blue in color yellow it's a weak sprark and you have issue's with the ignition system.

once you have verified you've got good spark then it's time to look for gas, get a gauge hook it to the shraider valve on the fuel rail turn the key on and you should see the pressure increase for a second, no need to disconnect this or that because it's suppose to activate the fuel pump once the key is on and it will last for 5 seconds or longer depending if the ECM sees an oil pressure signal.

once you are all done with that then you have verified you have spark

if both of those are fine then it get's a little tougher to figure out, is it a bad oil sending switch, bad relay to the fuel cells flooded motor and on and on but you have to find out if there is spark and if there is fuel first.

[DanielC]

I also used to think I could just use an old spark plug with a wide gap to check for spark, and have also help the spark plug wire close to the engine to check for spark.
Once or twice, the ignition system used me for the ground. It is worth it to me to have the tester. I can hook it up, and it holds itself, safely, and away from gas fumes. Compared to the price of a fuel pressure gauge, the ignition tester is cheap.
Not getting shocked is well worth the price to me. Some may like the excitement of a electric shock, I prefer to avoid it. Your opinion may differ.

[bobchris]

the gas fumes are hard to ignite in the air now in an enclosed space different ball game so it's really not a concern to start with. the trick to not getting shocked is not holding it by the boot and holding it a couple inches from the boot. Now if your grounding yourself then you really shouldn't be leaning on the motor during this test or you will get shocked.

using a plug with a wider gap not too smart, it has no effect and actually makes it worse to see because you have to have an even higher KV value to jump the gap so it's a waiste of time to do that. All that has to be done is laying it on the exhaust manifold or intake and standing back.

There's always two ways of doing things sometimes people just try and make it harder than it has to be.

[mhaaland]

i had something like this happen this last summer. My problem was a bad inline fuse by the battery. i cut the inline fuse out and put in a breaker.

[wcherashore]

The fuel pump is working, I can hear it turn on... it appears to be an issue with the lanyard/kill switch.

Thanks for the help, I will let you know if this gets figured out. Fortuneatly, the boat went in to have perfect pass installed and I asked the mechanic to check it out.

[M3Fan]

The fuel pump is working, I can hear it turn on...

A pump can still be bad and sound OK. Ask me how I know!

[DanielC]

There are two fuel pumps, and they both have to work.
You have to check the fuel pump pressure when you have any issues like this with a GT-40 engine, there is no feed back to the engines computer on what the fuel pressure is, or on the fuel-air ratio in the exhaust system. The computer just assumes the fuel pressure is correct, and meters fuel accordingly.

[hondaprlud]

I had this same problem on my 96 GT-40 last fall (while I was showing it to a prospective buyer). It ended up being a bad relay. The fuel pump would cycle on just like yours. $10 problem solved, and the guy still bought the boat. We could get the boat to run while spraying starting fluid in the air intake, called my dealer and he fixed in 30 seconds. He said that is fairly common.

I also had the inline fuse go bad on that boat, but if I remember correctly, it would not crank.

[93nautique0710]

I also used to think I could just use an old spark plug with a wide gap to check for spark, and have also help the spark plug wire close to the engine to check for spark.
Once or twice, the ignition system used me for the ground. It is worth it to me to have the tester. I can hook it up, and it holds itself, safely, and away from gas fumes. Compared to the price of a fuel pressure gauge, the ignition tester is cheap.
Not getting shocked is well worth the price to me. Some may like the excitement of a electric shock, I prefer to avoid it. Your opinion may differ.

thats funny likes the excitement of getting shock that must be the reason for my father said here boy hold this wire

[93nautique0710]

does it have a ignition control module on the side of the distribator cause they go bad all the time on ford cars the number one reason for no start