Ok I'll apologize in advance if I'm not in the right area for this post But anyhow I bought this boat about a week ago from a fellah close by. Its a 2008 36 horse pro drive on a 2008 excel mud buddy special edition. 17 by 54. The boat has been running good all week and then the other day I went to crank it and the battery was completely dead. Took it to the parts house to get it tested and it was so dead that they couldn't even get their tester to register that it was even connected. So they have me a new battery and said that it was probably just a bad bat Since I had just purchased it 2 days earlier. So I started disconnecting the battery after each use. Then today was out running the boat and my trim went out and all of the wires on my harness and the wires leading to my control Handel got really hot and started smoking. I shut the motor off and the wiring harness went up in flames. Do not know what to do and not sure how to go about figuring out what caused this problem. Surely there is a short. But where to start? Thanks in advance

Steven

Give me a little time to hunt everything up. Mine is a 07 and apparently back then, the hot that fed the control box, was not fused (at least on mine it wasn't). I just completely rewired my engine due to this. Complete new waterproof wire harness and actually added some switches and fuses.

wire diagram from PD
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a few others I found on this site
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wiring 2.jpg

Check the clutch while you're looking, if it shorts out, it'll burn up all kinds of good stuff...

waterproof connector is a MSD 6pin 6 wire connector
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burnt wire that was not fused (orange wire to control box)
got so hot it melted the wire loom
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busted wire harness, thus replaced it with above
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Anything is possible so I changed them all, its not many wires and not that much money for peace of mind. Hope this helps, cuz I was overwhelmed at first as well.

is this thread still open? i have a question for banded mallard

i tried to pm you but ill just ask on here.

did you ever find out what caused the orange wire to get so hot? what exactly does it power? and how big of a fuse do i need to put in it?

The orange wire, in my old harness, was the power wire from the battery that fed power to all the switches. In my old 07' wire harness, it was not fuses. Now, on all new motors, that wire is fused. I have a 25 A inline fuse on my orange wire now. The reason it shorted out could have been several things. That hot fed the trim switch, key switch, etc. So if any switch, or the clutch itself had a blip, normally the fuse would blow to protect everything. Since I didn't have a fuse, the wire got hot and melted the insulation.

ahhh ok. that makes since. i was wondering because the fuse fell out of mine and i needed to replace it. thats a huge help. i appreciate it