Oh, okay. Y'all want details. Obviously I'm not a technician, but I manage to muddle through.. here's how that went.
I didn't get to the boat this weekend. Other duties kept me busy Saturday, and we had a rainy Sunday. But I thought about it. And planned.
I made some clip leads long to reach from the HPDI VST pump to the console. This is so I could read the voltage while standing at the controls. I knew that if I had 12 volts across those terminals for a few seconds after turning the ignition key on, and the pump didn't run, I was screwed. See, that pump is about $ 700. Figure another $75 to get a replacement flown down here, plus another 11% (import duty...) I was looking at $850 if the pump was toast. And it's gonna be three or four days, minimum, to even get it here. Hell, I wouldn't have had any fingernails left by then.
I was prepared to tear it apart to see who makes the electric motor in it. I gotta think that the cost in that thing is in machining to make an electric pump intrinsically safe enough to run continuously while immersed in gasoline. Yamaha can't afford to build Molotov cocktails and sell them as outboards....but I bet the motor itself is probably only a hundred bucks, somewhere in the world. Probably China.
If you read this thread, you might have noticed that I have been real curious as to what turns the electric pump off after those few seconds when the ignition is first turned on. Talking with Andy at SIM, he explained to me that the ECM ( which I am sure stands for Expensive Computer Motherthumper) turns it off if it senses no RPMs. And it runs all the time when the motor is running and there are RPMs and the ECM is happy.
Okay, that explains it, but I am still really interested in this. Because lets face it, the best I can hope for is that something OTHER than the pump or the ECM has failed. I don't suspect the ECM, cause lots of other stuff on the motor is working. So I am praying for something simple. Something not starting at $ 850....
Then this morning, just as I was about to head down to the boat with my DVM, clip leads, and tools in hand, a kind soul who will remain nameless ( unless he says it's okay to name him) emailed me some of the tech manual pages for the 200/250 HPDI. All RIGHT!! Information! Input! I had no manual until this point. Been educating myself as I went. And that's slow. ( And I can't whine about either the teacher, or the student..)
However, once I had some documentation, It took about three minutes to find this page:
See item 3 there? That gave me hope! A fuel pump relay! Hallelujah. A slim hope starts to grow...now, if I can just figure out where this thingy is located, it gives me something to check if I don't have that voltage on the pump with the key on. That makes sense, right?
So, continuing onward, I find this drawing next:
And lordy lordy, there it is again. Item 3, Fuel Pump Relay. And the news is even better. This thing is located under the plate ( Yamaha calls it a bracket) that the ECM is mounted to, under the ignition coils. I HATE taking all this stuff apart with my motor hanging out over a lot of salt water, (I have already been diving once for a screwdriver) but I will do it.
A little more digging, now that I know for the first time that such a thing as a Fuel Pump Relay even exists, and I find the procedure to check it:
"Heck" ( I figger) "I can do that stuff." I mean, it's not rocket science, right? measure some continuity or something. At this point I am hoping, hoping, hoping, that I have a bad relay. Whereas ten minutes before, I didn't even know I had a relay at all. And I am still assuming this relay is for that VST pump. I mean, as has been pointed out here by others, this motor is FULL of pumps. All over the place.
So, down to the boat I go. Fist full of tools and a heart full of hope. And a plan. First of course, is the pre-op prep. Take the cover off:
That's layer one. There are several layers to this. Then take the cover for the flywheel and etc. off, exposing all them shiny expensive thangs. Really makes me wish I was doing this in a shop, or at least over dry pavement.
This is the part I gotta check out first: the electric pump inside the VST. The arrows point to the two terminals where it gets it's power.
I had this entire VST totally apart Friday. The pump, float and needle valve are all in there. And a bitch of an 0-ring gasket to re-use.
If I got power and no pump, it's looking bleak. So I clip on my homemade clip leads ( one's yellow cause I didn't have any red wire)
and run them up to the console, where I hook in a DVM, cross my fingers, take a deep breath, and turn the ignition to the "ON" position.....and I see:
Can you see those four beautiful zeros on that DVM? No voltage. I have never been so happy to see a lack of voltage in my life. It's probably not the same as sitting in a dead electric chair, but when I saw this I knew there was a chance that this pump was not broken, my heart was doing it's little happy dance in my chest. Things were looking up. Next I had to remove the ignition coil cover, which looks like a big alien robot spider after you disconnect all 12 connectors. More stuff to worry about dropping overboard. The 6 ignition coils are mounted to the plastic cover which thing lifts off, exposing that Expensive Computer Mothermugger..(ECM)
I had the motor tilted up, and am sitting on my transom, so this view is upside down compared to the view in the book. But the "X" I drew on this photo marks the spot underneath which, on the other side of that aluminium plate, on a layer beneath the Expensive Chomper of Money (ECM) in a nest of connectors and as many kilometers of wiring as a set of fine young enthusiastic Japanese engineers could fit into an outboard housing, supposedly resides the fuel pump relay:
So, there I stand with a 10 mm socket in hand, ready to do open heart surgery, when I think I will just feel along that little black cable above and to the left of the X in the photo. I run my fingers along it, under the edge of the plate, and up against a connector. I place my fingers on the outside of the connector, thinking I will just give it a wiggle test, and I hear and feel a sound that makes my entire day.
'click'.
Yep, the connector clicked into place when I wiggled it. Because while I had been thinking "what has changed, what is different since the last time this ran and now", I was not thinking enough. Oh, I well knew I had run the motor, and the fuel system dry because I had the fuel valve shut off. I kept thinking this was what had changed, what had happened. And, yes, it had.
BUT....it was not the only thing. I had also removed this entire plate, Extraterrestrial Confusion Module and all, in order to get to the outer exhaust cover, to replace that and the ruined Water Pressure Valve (Poppet) that started this whole episode in the first place. I had disconnected all of these connectors, and thought that I had reconnected all of them. And somehow, probably because it got stressed during the reinstallation, this one hidden connector had not been seated completely in the socket.
I was so relieved, I didn't go any further. I unclicked it, inspected it for damage, etc, and then re-clicked it. And tugged it. And it was tight. And the Lord said, It Is Good. And I said Hallelujah. And started carefully reinstalling everything I had taken off to get to this point. I went over every connector. I made sure all the little things I had loosened last Thursday, Friday, and this morning were back in place, in their clips, tightened. Finally, I got to that moment where there were no extra screws or bolts to reinstall. I have found that it's a good sign in these things when you have exactly the same number of parts as you started with, and the same number of fasteners as you have things to be bolted. It's not good when these numbers don't match, like when you have run out of screws too early, or even when you think everything is back together and you still have a handful of washers and stuff left over.... Nope. This went carefully back together.
And I pumped the fuel bulb thirteen times for good luck. And mentally reminded the powers that be of what a clean and goodly life I try to live, and I promised to eat all my broccoli if this would just work....and I turned the key.
And fired that mother up.
