Home › Forum › Ask A Member › OMC remote controls with the big red plug… › Re: OMC remote controls with the big red plug…
Well, with the addition of the emergency safety lanyard switch in the early 80s, reliability started to decline. Those safety switches can be very sensitive and the lanyards are prone to wear which might not be depressing the safety switch far enough.
I am confused about just what you are testing with the ohm meter, there are no specs for testing the powerpack black yellow lead and ground. You should be testing between the control box harness pins between the black/yellow and black leads. You will need a service manual to spell out which pin corresponds to which lead. But, and this is important, just because the ohm meter might read infinity between these two leads with the key "on" does not guarantee there is no stop circuit problem in the control box harness/key switch/emergency stop switch. Needless to say, there IS a problem if the meter leads less than infinity on the high ohms scale. Keep in mind that there might be a problem in the engine harness as well.
Papster mentioned some good areas to look at, look for spliced/taped leads as well, good places for arcing. Some larger rigs use a harness extension, sometimes salt water gets into the red plug connectors hidden in the boat. I’m assuming the rigs you are working on are not long enough to require and extension though. You can usually see black arcing marks inside the red connectors if problems have occurred there.
All that being said, the reliability of the control box wiring/key switch/emergency stop switch is pretty good. Needless to say, exposure to salt water certainly creates a nice path for arcing, the key switch and emergency stop switches should always be replaced if the boat sinks in salt water, but I guess that is the least of the problems after such an event.