Bicki Howell, Nellie D. 37VT63
Tom Blackwood, Thistle Dew 37VT46 gave us very prudent advice back in 2011 (Tuggers Issue 48). When you are threatened by an electrical fire, shut off the electrical "fuel" source--the batteries and shore power. [Read his Tuggers Issue 48 article on the LNVT Blog: http://goo.gl/iCrdGG]
Two hundred engine hours after installing a new engine starter motor and solenoid on Nellie D. we had a problem. The starter solenoid failed, and not in a good way. Most commonly, solenoid failures happen when the coil plunger ("switch") doesn't close, resulting in the starter motor not turning over. In our case, the solenoid coil plunger remained closed. This caused the starter motor to continue turning over until it literally was melting. We were fortunate, as we were simply re-anchoring and had just dropped the hook when it happened. We smelled something toxic, opened the engine room door and were immediately inundated with white smoke. We quickly shut down the engine and turned our master battery selector switch to "OFF". With the electrical supply shut off, the melting starter motor stopped turning and slowly cooled down. We had the spares on board and had both parts replaced in five hours. Not a fun job, but we were happy knowing we had taken the right steps to avert a scarier problem of an electrical fire onboard
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