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89 Force 85 - no spark - anyone substitute CDI & Coils ?

J

JanS48

Member
Greetings everyone, newbie here to this Forum - I recently got a boat (real cheap) with an 89 Force 85 on it the previous owner said it ran great until it lost spark. I'm kinda tech savy so in checking things out I find the stator coils that are supposed to charge the CDI boxes are only putting out about 3 v AC where they should be well above that - 50 to 100. Checked both pairs blue/yellow - same on both pairs. In looking at the VERY rusted flywheel nut and seeing the cost of a stator, I decided to investigate another route of repair - The trigger coils 'seem' to be ok and give a pulse when cranking the engine. I was anticipating going with combo type coils where the CDI and coil are combined. The only unknown here is will the trigger coils from an 89 fire the much newer DC type CDI used on the newer motors - curious if anyone else has tried this successfully. I do understand this will take some re-mounting and re-wiring of the new coils - I can handle that.
Thanks in Advance
Jan
 
JanS48 said:
Greetings everyone, newbie here to this Forum - I recently got a boat (real cheap) with an 89 Force 85 on it the previous owner said it ran great until it lost spark. I'm kinda tech savy so in checking things out I find the stator coils that are supposed to charge the CDI boxes are only putting out about 3 v AC where they should be well above that - 50 to 100. Checked both pairs blue/yellow - same on both pairs. In looking at the VERY rusted flywheel nut and seeing the cost of a stator, I decided to investigate another route of repair - The trigger coils 'seem' to be ok and give a pulse when cranking the engine. I was anticipating going with combo type coils where the CDI and coil are combined. The only unknown here is will the trigger coils from an 89 fire the much newer DC type CDI used on the newer motors - curious if anyone else has tried this successfully. I do understand this will take some re-mounting and re-wiring of the new coils - I can handle that.
Thanks in Advance
Jan
Click to expand...
More info - being a tech I like to be sure of things before jumping so I fashoned a 'test' AC power supply to replace the stator AC power going to the CD units - I used an old trick to get a fairly low-current AC voltage source - I took two 12v ac power adapters and hooked up one of them backwards - this gives me 120 VAC at very low current - fine for testing the CD boxes and trigger coils - with the CD boxes powered this way I get SPARK ! on cyl's 1 & 2 - so this is proof positive the Stator charge coil is bad. What sources to you folks use for that item ?
I'm still thinking of using a set of 3 combo CDi / Coils which can be had for under a 100 bucks and get the newer generation spark - only question is will my trigger coils from the older 89 era Force fire the newer Mercury all in one units ? Somebody out there has to have tried this....
 
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