Low battery voltage alarm

[bwchris]

Hi. I'm having a problem with my 2005 DF 250. When I run it at idle on the muffs I get a "Low Battery Voltage" alarm on my SMIS gauge. The engine sputters and shuts off. The engine temperature also starts to increase while it is off and when I restart it. The voltage on the SMIS gauge is always close to 14 if not 14.5. Although I do think I noticed voltage drop to 13.6 the last time it happened. The alarm comes in no matter which battery I have selected and one of the batteries is a week old.

It also did it when I went out the other day. Just once at idle, leaving the ramp. Low Battery Voltage Alarm came in. Engine sputtered, but did not stall. I shut engine off, waited a minute, restarted and increased RPMs to about 1200 and it never did it again. I even left the engine running at normal idle (650 RPM) while fishing and it didn't do it. Almost seems like it only happens when engine is cold ( I'm in Jupiter, Fl. so it's not too cold!) Has anybody had this happen to them before? Thanks.

Chris

[boats.net]

May need to check key on voltage to ECU on engine to see if 11 volts or higher.

[bwchris]

Thanks. I redid the white wire and everything is good now. White wire comes straight off my battery. Do you recommend that or off the common terminal on my battery switch?

[boats.net]

It will work either way, we use the common post on switch.

[kmoose]

Clean all your terminal points throughout the battery system as well. But I will note that I had the exact same symtoms when I had a faulty IAC valve.

[bwchris]

Thanks again, guys. Hopefully it stays fixed and doesn't turn out to be the IAC Valve. I guess I'll run the white wire to the common post on the switch.

[bwchris]

Just an update - think it's fixed. The main problem was that I had an overheating condition due to bad water pump impeller. The Low Voltage Alarm was due to the fact that I installed a 2" Suzuki Engine Monitoring gauge along with the SMIS gauges. I did this when I installed my network 3 or 4 years ago because I originally had Lowrance LMF 400 gauges which did not show any engine alarms. The monitoring gauge is analog and when any alarm was generated from the engine the analog gauge would rob the power from the SMIS gauge and show "Low Battery Voltage". Unfortunately, it would not show the overheating alarm anywhere because of this interference between the different gauges.
Changed impeller and disconnected monitoring gauge and so far, so good.