Volvo TAMD74EDC starting issues.

[Jon Foerster]

Started my weekend like any other at the boat. Get down Friday and wash the boat off. While cleaning up the boat for the Memorial Day weekend we had the stereo playing. This was a good 5 hours of cleaning. Then we decided we wanted to take the boat to another marina for dinner.. And this how it began.. Sorry in advance for all the detail but I want to make sure if i put this out there everyone can understand where it started and where i’m At.
Thanks in advance for any advise. Oh, I’m not a mechanic but I’m pretty mechanically inclined. My prior boat had Cummins 420 Diamonds. Tony taught me a lot about that boat. But these electronic Volvo’s have me puzzled.
First the boat is a 2000 Trojan/Carver 440 Express. I have the TAMD74EDC. I have 2 8D batteries. Up until Friday night I have not had any issue firing the boat up. It has always done exactly what it’s supposed to. 4 cycles and engine fires up.

1.Friday night after washing the boat and playing the stereo while doing this. I went to start the boat and the engines barely turned over. As in they actually turned over about 2 times. Then Click.. I tried this on both motors. Tried it again and again it did the same. Maybe a full crank then back to clicking. Puzzled at how this could be since the charger was on and we weren’t playing the stereo loud by any means. After pulling out the owners manual to ck about the charger and start my investigation to what may be the problem I read about the main battery switch. There is a Battery 1, Battery 2 & BOTH. Mine was set on Both. It’s been that way since I got it last year. So after reading about 1 & 2. I switched the battery to 1 and tried to start it and did the same on 2. Same result, starter would click. What I realized when switching between 1 & 2 the lights that I had on would change. As in when 1 was on i had full bright lights in the cabin. When on 2 they were very dim. I figured I must have a bad battery and it was pulling down the other batter that’s why it would crank on either battery.
2. I decided I would check the batteries and try and figure out what was going on. I pulled the caps and all the water looked fine. I decided to run up to the store and grab distilled water and top them off. After that we went to eat at our marina to grab a bite and let the batteries charge. Got back out to the boat and tried to crank them and just a click at the starters.. We decided to call it a day and not try anymore to go out. I then decided to test the batteries w/ my volt meter. While doing this I pulled the battery terminals and cleaned them all up and realized the #2 battery terminals looked like they weren’t making good contact. So wire brushed them real good. After cleaning this I decided to call it a night. Let the batteries charge over night. BTW. When I Volt metered the batteries. The #2 battery was at about 12.4 #1 about 12.6. Figured they were recovering from being down.
3. Next morning I was eager to try and turn the boat over and see if they took or held a charge. Of course I switched between battery 1 & 2 and the same result. Click a the starter. At this time I decided to pull the batteries and get them bench tested and buy new ones if needed. When i went to the Battery shop they said #2 batter was definitely bad. Barely any cranking amps. Showed 12V but no crank amps. #1 showed to be good. But I decided that I didn’t want to gamble with it for the holiday and got 2 new 8D batteries. Figured this would fix the problem.
4. Got back tot the boat and replaced both batteries. Before i left the shop they tested both batteries for voltage and amps. Perfect.. Went to start and again Nothing on either motor. At this point this put me into the mode of there must be something shutting down the engines. Some kind of protective mode. Maybe from having the bad battery or something. I called Carver and got one of their techs. We talked about what all happened. As he walked me through some steps he said to flip the Fireboy into bypass. I have the 3000 series Automatic engine shutdown model. When i flipped it into bypass both motors started up perfectly. I tried this 2 times and it worked perfect. After 2 times in bypass I went ahead and tries out of bypass. It worked perfect. I thought we figured it out. Something in the Fireboy switch. So after 3 successful start ups we decided to strip the canvas off and take the boat out. this took about 30 minutes to get ready. At this point I went to start up the boat and back to square one. Both starters would just click.
5. So I retraced my steps. Tried to go over everything again and still NO start. Just click at the starters. At this point I call back to Carver. Tell the guy what happened. He says maybe the relay in the Fireboy Automatic Engine kill must have tripped. And if it does there’s nothing to do but by a new one. During this time there have been NO flashing or alarms going off front he EDC unit. Nothing from the diagnostic button. I will say this. It came on a couple times but not flashing. And not all the time. So I did not push the button to see if it would blink a code. I didn’t think about it since it wasn’t going off.
6. At this point after talking to a volvo mechanic I started looking for a breaker, fuse, relay or bad contact. Keep in mind that this is going on with both engines at the same time. Very unlikely that a similar fuse, relay or contact would go out at the same time on both engines.. but either way I traced every battery wire checked every fuze and relay. Anything related to the starting of the engine I pulled and checked. & checked again. the Volts at the starters was 13. 4V. Plenty of power. I check power before and after the starter locations. I still go back to the Fireboy engine shut off possibly causing the problem. I pulled the panel apart to look for something obvious. Of course I didn’t See anything. I went ahead and pulled out all the antique GPS and Radar to get any un-needed wires out of the way to make sure they were not causing any issues.
7. The design of the cabin door slides under the panel where all of the wiring for the boat goes. I think this could be an issue. So I’ve tried to clean up the un-needed wires out. while I was inspecting the FireBoy 3000 I noticed a couple jumper Diodes that may have been touching. I know they are for reverse power serge. But wondered if that would be what my have tripped the relay on the box. At this point with everything i’ve Tried and looked at I’m having to throw in the town. I’m not sure what direction to go now.

Current status is there’s plenty of Voltage. The starters just click. I know it was a novel but I figured I’d put as much information as possible to give someone something to chew on.

Topic

[Jon Foerster]

Problem resolved

Problem finally figured out. “ Guest Battery selector switch” After another day of tracing wires. Testing every fuse and relay it all came back to the first day. Starting when noticing a bad battery issue. When I started the battery switch was on “BOTH” it had been there since I got the boat last year. And when I started. When I started to isolate the battery issue I switched from 1 & 2 to figure out #2 battery was bad. I just assumed that when I was trying to start the boat (Friday night) #1 the battery was weak from being on “BOTH” and #2 making weak.
So for the next 2 days I never put the battery switch back on “BOTH” while i was testing and checking. I traced and pulled every battery connection from the battery back to the engine starters. Cleaned and made sure good connections. I replaced both batteries to be sure there was not a bad battery issue. I was getting 13.4V throughout the system to the starter. But when the battery switch was on 1 or 2 it would break down and only give me a “click” at the starter. Apparently a faulty switch.
In the end it came down to the advise of all. It was definitely a bad connection and electrical. And in the end it took me to go back to Friday and traced my steps then. The only thing I did that night was take the Battery switch from BOTH to 1&2 while trying to isolate which battery was bad. And the fact the both engines doing the exact same thing at the same time. Lead me to look and think about what connects both engines.
THE SWITCH….
Fireboy does connect both engines as well and it was just a coincidence that I must have for an instance while talking to the Carver tech that I had put the battery in BOTH while talking to him and hit the fireboy bypass at the same time. I started the boat engines 3 times and everything went perfect. Just after I got off the phone I went back to switching the battery switch back to 1 & 2 and didn’t pay attention at that time that I had started in BOTH.
Anyhow 4 days of chasing my tail to figure out the switch is bad. I put the details so that I hope it helps someone else out one day.
Cheers & happy boating… It was an asswhip for me this Memorial Day weekend….
But I did get to know my boat a LOT better…

[Rob Schepis]

Jon Foerster wrote:

I agree that the fireboy wouldn’t be the culprit since I’m getting initial Power to the starter. I would agree that it would seem like it would shut down all power to the starter.

Jon, You missed the point as to why the Fireboy would not be the culprit. The Fireboy controls the fuel solenoid only, it is totally separate from the “cranking” circuit. If the engine cranked as normal but no start/run, then you would have to add the Fireboy to the list. For our diesel engines the Fireboy is simply a fuel starvation device…

Opposite concept from the neutral safety switch – if the engine cranks and does not start/run you would not look at the neutral safety switch.

Hope this makes sense…….

[Jon Foerster]

Battery connections

Would it make sense that with both engines having the same issue at the same time that it would have to be something that connects both. As in the main positive that goes to the battery selector 1,2, both or off? I pulled both battery terminal at the battery and cleaned them.. they were not that bad but did it anyway. Would it make sense that it would be the positive at the selector switch.? Thats the only thing that I can think of that has both engines in common at the same time.

When I followed the Negative battery cables they each split to their own bank then to the starters..

I agree that the fireboy wouldn’t be the culprit since I’m getting initial Power to the starter. I would agree that it would seem like it would shut down all power to the starter. And when I went through their trouble shooting list it should be OK. But they are on my list to contact to understand exactly how it works when shutting down power.

I remember back in the day on an old truck, how I could cross on the solenoid and make the starter start. Didn’t want to try that not knowing which to cross and cause permanent damage to the starter.

Thanks Tony, you are a wealth of knowledge. I’m glad you started up this forum.. I still have all my old emails from the Cummins. I could forward them to you. Not sure if you can post them.

[Tony Athens]

Only gets a "Click-Click"

Not really sure how to tackle this, but #1 would be to understand that the starting circuit and running circuit on the engine should have nothing to do with the rest of the boat, at least in its initial wiring.. The Fireboy comes after that, a neutral safely switch comes after that, and 1-2-both switches the same……………..An engine in a boat should not talk to all the other things unless you make it do so. BTW, you have tried moving / wiggling the gear shift back & forth while trying to crank, right?

So, back to starting your engine—On the surface is sounds like you have some bad hi-resistance connections on your battery cables ( POS or NEG or both. Just enough to make things “click” and show a voltage connection, but will not pass the 100’s of amps needed to turn the starter motor or engage the Bendix on the starter motor….The fact that it kinda worked and then did not, also says that..
1) Where do you start? Every large ground wire to and from your engines & batteries. . REMOVE, clean with a small SS wire brush & WD-40 and use a common white lithium based grease on all threads before you re-assemble. Everything tight. Just one bad ground can do exactly what you are describing.
The terminal connections on the back of your 1-2-both switches and the contacts inside have also shown to cause this type on nausea..

2) Learn the starting circuit your engine—They all work the same way—Volvo, CAT, Cummins, etc etc. Diagram attached. You need to learn how to “JUMP IT” . . The circuit is pure analog, and on many engines/factory wiring, ff the main engine POS switch for that engine is on, you do not even have to turn on the IGN key to crank the engine ( cranking is not running—that is a on the IGN circuit) —just jump the mag switch. It’s back to “learning your starting circuit”. All you normally need is a DVM witl good alligator terminals and a 12-24” piece of 12 ga. wire. Jump the mag switch is a 2-5 AMP spark. Jumping directly to the Bendix is a 30-50 AMP spark. Jumping to the main starter terminal requires a 1/0 cable and in not for the timid.

The fact that it goes “click” tells me it is not your Fireboy, although you need to learn how that works too as IMO, the “Capt” , not the Fireboy, should have the say as to when to shut the engines down. Fireboys should only cut the IGN circuit when hooked up right.

Start with that..

And remember that your DC POWER DISTRIBUTION system in your boat has how many years of Marine Age on it? (15-ish?) …99+% chance it was all assembled dry and Mother Nature never stops eating away on high current low voltage DC connections.

Tony

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