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2012 Malibu Wakesetter LSV issue


AaronMefford

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Right now it is a bit of a love hate thing with my boat, well, more love than hate but, wish she wasn't hating me.  I bought her just over a year ago, and she has been pretty good, but lately it seems I have had a rash of problems, seemingly unrelated.  

The primary problem we have had is that the boat has always (in my possession) had an underreported voltage problem in the maliview screens.  That is yesterday when the battery voltage was 12.6, the boat reported a voltage of 10.7.  It is always 1-2 volts below.  When operating it reports 13.3 or lower despite the voltage testing higher everywhere I can poke.  I took the boat to the dealer last fall and had them check into this issue, and was told it was a problem with the "computer".  I purchased a new computer, and installed it about this week, with no change apparent.

Until now the low reported voltage has mostly been a nuisance, the alarm going off prematurely, and crying wolf so that when voltage is truly low it goes unnoticed.   As we were wrapping up our Powell trip the end of July, the boat did something knew.  As we were driving, engine power (thrust) was momentarily lost, but then returned.  The pause was very brief but noticed.  It happened a couple more times in the 2 hour trip back to the dock.  On our next outing to a local lake we had a few more power sags, but things seemed good until toward the end of our day, the engine shutdown completely.  It then did not want to start backup immediately.  We were able to wait a few minutes and then she started up and we made it home.  But then on the next, our last, we took a group of boys out, and the boat died after our second ride, and refused to start again, just as the weather changed drastically.  After a long wait we managed to get it started and limped back to the doc, in a lightning storm, with severe winds, rain and thus waves.  As we reached the wakefree zone the boat died again, and again would not start.  We were quickly losing ground as we drifted out of the wakefree zone.  We managed to get a tow from a kind soul and finally got everyone out of the storm.  

So I have been trying to work through the issues and trying to determine if there is a single underlying cause.

 

Low Voltage reported at the console, while a multimeter shows good standard voltage 14+ running and 12+ off.

Occasionally, the boat will not start after sitting in the water.  Seems to be voltage related, perhaps truly low voltage, that was missed due to the above issue.  Other than the last trip patience has always prevailed.  It always cranks but no fire.

Boat stalling while running at speed 2-3k rpms.  A couple of times the stall turned into a stop.

Port ballast gauge stopped reporting.

WetSounds WS420 popped it's fuse then fried when it was replaced.

Boat overheats almost every trip on the first start.  Shutdown restart fixes it immediately, it is as though the water is not flowing.

Wedge reported up but was down.

Now the boat will not power up at all.  Read on

 

The low voltage was diagnosed by the dealer as a computer swap require.  I did a computer swap with no improvement.  One thing I noticed while resolving the Wetsound issue, which is telling, the ignition on (blue) wire matches the voltage reported by the computer, while every other power wire I can find matches the battery.  It seems that the computer is really seeing this lower voltage.  If anyone has a firmware update, I would love to get ahold of it.

Not sure what to thing about the stalling and starting.  Seems like it could be a power issue, but also like a fuel pump/filter issue.  Spark Plugs were replaced at the beginning of the season.

Investigating the port ballast I found that the wires running to the gauge were pulled loose, bare and stripped.  Digging deeper they had been completely pulled out of the WEMA float.  I dissected and rebuilt the float and it seems to be working now.  I'll know better when I get back out on the water.  Seems to be an isolated issue.  The wires had worked their way under the composite floor board and were crushed.  I re-routed them to the access box after the repair.

The WetSounds WS420 circuit board looks signifiantly degraded, the surface shows corrosion.  This is likely what led to this failure, another seemingly unrelated isolated electrical issue.  This however has led to rewiring the stereo back to what I believe is the stock configuration controlled by the Rockford Unit.  The RFX3000 was showing some issues though and does not support bluetooth so I am replacing with an RFX5000, should have been a drop in replacement.

The overheating I am unsure on.  My buddy is convinced it is just the computer lying, I disagree, I believe it is getting an air bubble that is causing the issue, but not sure how to diagnose and resolve.  It appears one of the hoses is a bit kinked, but it is a molded hose and I have not had luck identifying a replacement.  It is the ~1.25"  hose that leads out of the filter jar to the motor.  My theory is that when this hose is cold the kink is causing disruption.  As the engine overheats the hose relaxes and stops causing a problem.  But why is a stop and start required?

No idea on the wedge one of the many things that was just wrong on the last trip.  I'll have to trouble shoot more when I get it back on the water.  We manually raised it using the bypass for now.

And finally, in the process of replacing the RFX3000, something shorted against the ignition wire, not sure what, I only heard the small spark.  After the swap things weren't working and some live troubleshooting was required.  The short happened just as I was wrapping things up.  But here is the deal.  Now the boat will not power up.  Nothing.  I have been scouring for fuses, and found several, several of which were blown.  The one on the ignition wire blown.  A wire coming from the breaker/ignition board had a fuse that should have blown but instead melted and failed to fail.  I don't think this happened during this issue, but clearly was an issue.  Also concerning was that it was a 40amp fuse on a smallish 12 awg wire (looks more like 14), seems a very high value but charts show it as borderline for short runs.  Another 5amp fuse back by the engine in an inline holder, was blown, maybe the port ballast?  Nothing in the fuse block on the engine was blown. As far as I can tell. Not sure how to deal with the larger blocks (fusable links?).  Stereo fuses all intact.  Voltage at every point I can find to the test looks good, but still nothing when the dash power button is pressed.  As I have a spare computer now, I did a swap back to see if that would resolve the issue, but no luck.

 

Any thoughts, ideas, words of encouragement would be greatly appreciated.  Peak of the season and I'm dead.  Instead of escaping the heat, I am baking in it troubleshooting problems.

 

 

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On your Overheats, Feel the back side of your raw water water pump at start up. If it is pumping water, it will be cold to the touch. If it's not priming, it will get warm. Quick throttle blip often solves that.

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By raw water pump I assume you mean the pump that has the impeller in it.  I am not certain that I dare reach it while the engine is running, I can barely reach it at all where it is located, doing so requires laying down in the locker pressed up against the engine.

If this is the case though, is there any other solution than the throttle blip?  What is the cause?

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Some good news, I found the failure that was causing the boat to not start, the push button dash switch seems to have burned out.  Bypassing that switch, the boat will now start.

 

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3 hours ago, AaronMefford said:

Some good news, I found the failure that was causing the boat to not start, the push button dash switch seems to have burned out.  Bypassing that switch, the boat will now start.

 

Have read about this & carry a spare

Had an impeller start to loose parts of the rubber blades after one season on a new impeller. Went about 10 weeks betwen start ups.

Picked this up with the winter maintainence routine. Have never had troubles priming or with any suspected air pockets in the colooling system.

After the cooling system upgrade I can put my hand on the EXT CAT manifolds after a run, about as hot as a real hot cup of coffee. I have the .pdf file attached in the link below to see the routing.

The Rear mount with the exhaust manifilds reversed to a direct drive will neel a different length hose which I cover in the las tpost of the link below

When the temp alarm goes off, is anything excessivly hot to touch on the engine?

Should not have any hoses kinked, the small U hoses in the upgrade above do have a tight bend looks almost kinked but still allows adequate water flow

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I found and ordered this one, it appears to be the very same switch that came out of the boat so I hope it works.  I am amazed at how difficult it is to find a parts list for boats. I also saw the comments about this common switch failure, but misunderstood thinking it was the key switch in the breaker panel.  If that turns out to be the write one I'll order a spare.

http://amzn.to/2vSczVb

With the switch identified I was able to complete the swap of the RFX3000 to the RFX5000 with relatively no issues.  The stereo shop I took it to previously was a fail.  They told me that the dash controls for the stereo were no longer working and blamed the RFX3000.  They also told me that the sub output on the RFX3000 was too low, so the amp was not producing adequate sound.  They also failed to setup the front to rear fade the way that I wanted and disabled one of the Aux inputs in the process.  Finally they installed the new Rockford sub using what appears to be dry wall screws.  I am sure those wont rust out within the week, it might take two.  Perhaps I just got a bad tech, but I hate it when a shop indicates that they are familiar with boats and then get work like that.  There were even two boats in their bays when I got there, so not really sure what to say.  And people wonder why I do everything myself.

I looked at that hose upgrade, unfortunately, I am unable to access many of the pictures.  I am wondering the best way to determine if my boat has or does not have those changes.  It seems that 2012 was in the flux of when they were being made.  Also not sure if they only apply to the Monsoon or if they also apply to the LSA 550 Supercharged.

 

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  • 5 years later...

Figured it was worth reviving a very old thread if it meant providing some of the solutions that originally started the thread.   Others who run into similar may benefit.

After a couple of years of dealing with the overheating problem I finally resolved it.  First I ordered a length of the hose matching the type that was kinked and replaced that kinked hose.  Also we went through the other hoses and found that there were chunks of impeller in some of the hoses, apparently from the prior owner, as I have not had an impeller destroyed since I owned the boat.  After clearing those lines and replacing the kinked line I have not had another overheat.

I've had the power switch fail a couple of other times so I now always carry spares.

The port ballast level sensor had one wire loose and after re-soldering it has been working.  This probably happened when I was installing the additional ballast system.

Still having occasional problems with the wedge dropping on its own, and the position not being accurately reflected on the dash.   I just know that if I am dragging my a** the wedge is probably down.  Most of the times I just bring it up but had a fuse blow a trip or two ago and didnt realize that was the issue, it wasn't the wedge up fuse so I didn't know to check it.   It was another fuse under the dash.

The biggest problem that still remains is the stalling issue.   Sometimes it runs great and there are no problems.   Actually last year I am not sure it stalled once the entire year.  This year started good but since has started stalling again.  This last trip out, one of the grandkids hit the blue glowy button and shut the boat down while it was idling.  After that it wouldn't restart for about 30 minutes.  It ran for a few minutes then failed again.  After that we called it for the day and limped back to the dock.   On our way it stalled out one more time.  Tapping the fuel pump seemed to help or may have just been coincidence. 

So if anyone knows what will cause a boat to randomly stall, still trying to resolve this issue.

 

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