MaddisonCain

I have one here that is having a dead short somewhere.....

I can't quite figure it out. Friend brought it to me saying it was having starting issues and the MFD was not working......

He had two batteries he brought as well.....

The newest one was just charged he said, so I checked it with a fluke and it only had 9v - obviously toast.

So I checked the other battery, get a load of this - it had reverse polarity!

I had the red wire of my fluke hooked to the pos. and the black to the neg.

It was fully charged, but I had a negative 12.6 v reading!

I put a new batt in, and it started right up...ran fine......about 30 minutes later the battery was dead. I did a draw test, and there is a huge draw coming from somewhere. It sparks like hell when you touch the cable to the batt. It kills a new battery pretty quick.....

You can do an ohms test on the pos and negative cable - and there is no resistance, meaning there is a dead short somewhere. I have traced all the wires and found nothing obvious...... I opened the black box and it was full of water.....

I am lost.....

I even tried to get a resistance reading between the lugs on the starter solenoid, and again there is no resistance........however when I hook a fully charged battery to it, the solenoid works fine, and the boat starts normally....

Where do I begin?