Is your motor's charging system regulated?

[Barnacle Bill]

There is a good chance that it isn't. Especially if you have an older motor. Systems without a regulator get regulated by the battery. A dirty or loose connection at the battery or a bad cell in a battery can cause voltages up to 18-19 volts. Our electronics do not like that. If you are lucky you have gear that will warn you of an over-voltage but not all have that feature. I learned this the hard way by going thru 3 Garmin 250s a few years back. I kept sending them back and Garmin Kept sending me replacements. The problem was only found after I had installed a volt meter on the dash. They are inexpensive and very easy to install.

While on the subject, if you have ever hooked up your battery cables back wards, even for a split second, there is a 99.9% chance you have blown your rectifier and your system is not charging.

Just thought I would pass that along and hopefully prevent someone from damaging there electronics from it. I've worked on a lot of motors but never a 4 cycle. So I don't know if they are regulated or not. Seems like they should be but I can find out.

[PanMan_VA]

I'm not sure if my four stroke is regulated or not. The volt meter and the voltage on the electronics shows 14v with the motor running and 12v-12.5v (depending on how much stuff I have on) when it is off.

[Barnacle Bill]

I was able to find out that they are still using small amperage stators on some motors. Those are most likely not regulated.

[papasage]

you will burn the rectifier if you take the battery cable loose while the motor is runnuing.

go to this site and they can tell you anything about any motor.
http://www.themarinedoctor.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl