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Smoked stator harness :( Help!

4K views 1 reply 1 participant last post by  gsr916 
#1 ·
The ground wire from the stator to the electrical box on my JS550 started smoking today and burnt up. Maybe the engine block wasnt grounded correctly or just heated up from a bad connection / high resistance... not sure. The negative wire from the battery is supposed to connect to the electrical box frame right?

Anyways... it started smoking when the starter was cranking. A HUGe puff of smoke came up. I will need to replace the wire but do you guys think anything else is jacked up? Anything in the stator? I'm having a hard time getting the flywheel off, so I can't really see if anything is messed up there yet. Any advice for me? Ridiculous... nothing worse than going to the lake and having something like this happen :( bummed

-Matt
 
#2 ·
Well I got my ski running again. So what happened is the line from the negative terminal of the battery connected to the frame of the electrical box, instead of the block. I had this ski completely apart (milled the head and cleaned up the inside... it used to look like someone took a shit in the bottom of it. or more like multiple shits...). Anyways, I put it back together that way because it seemed like that wire was already bent like it should go there. When I hit the start button, the starter worked but it cranked really really weak. I thought it was probably the old battery, so i changed that out and tried again. Same thing, really weak on turning it over, then i noticed the smoke coming from the stator harness. What was happening was the starter was grounding through the block as normal, but the only pathway to the negative terminal of the battery was through the stator ground, which is 16 gauge wire and not enough to handle the current. Basically it turned into a lightbulb and melted. Ridiculous. I replaced that whole wire through the harness all the way up to the electrical box and now it works perfectly!

I had to take off the rubber sheath around the stator harness wires though... just bare wires now. They still go into the rubber grommets on both ends so it should be water tight. Any thoughts on whether this is ok? or should i cover that up, because it will get wet for sure... I'm thinking it is probably fine?
 
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