Merc Optimax 200XL Steady Beep

[Pcilliterate]

I have a 02 Mercury Optimax 200XL. Today I was running about 2/3's throttle after running around for an hour or so and started to trim motor up and suddenly felt a large loss of power. I pushed throttle all the way open and boat was still slowing down. I was slowing to a troll speed when I started hearing a beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep sound. I put boat in neutal and horn went out. By the way, the tone, was steady and there was no "beeping", just a beeeeeeeeeeeep. Since horn went out, I put engine in neutral and slowly started adding power until I was going 2/3's again. No problem until I touched the Up trim button and immediately noticed loss of power. Horn started to beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep again. I was wondering if anyone knows how to troubleshoot this. I have read other posts that it may be overheating, has a bad sensor, has a cracked fuel line, low oil tank on the engine, clogged screen on the pickup tube on oil reservoir in the boat, etc. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Pcilliterate

[j_martin]

Steady horn is usually overheat. You have to figure out why. Water pressure, head temp, pee stream, how old is the pump, etc.

hope it helps
John

[Pcilliterate]

Thanks so much for replying.

[SSIMPALA71]

Without having a ddt or cds its hard to guess. With horn sounding after trim is touched I would lean towards a low voltage fault temporarily putting you in guardian. Cds or ddt should point you in the right direction.;)

[2springers26]

LOOSE battery wires! poor battery.. batt must be 800 cca min....!!!! install lock nuts..... an opti tell tail doesn't mean you have good water preuse to cool the motor....kurt

[Pcilliterate]

Went out this morning and low and behold, no power. I immediately went to the battery and the negative cable was loose. I could twist it around really easily. Does this mean that yesterday the optimax was unable to charge the battery, draining it on and on, and therefore whenever I would hit the trim button, it would put a big draw on the circuits (and since no help from the battery) it was indicating some kind of electrical fault????

The funny thing is that I repeatedly stopped, shut down the motor and restarted yesterday while this was all going on. When I got home I flushed out the motor also and it started right up?????? If I had enough juice to do that, why would it not be enough to trim/tilt while running? Also, how does this contribute to the overheat???

[Pcilliterate]

Problem was the alternator was not charging causing loss of battery power throwing me into guardian mode limiting the power. Changed out alternator and problem solved. Also installed Smartcraft Tach and now I can see a whole lot of data that I could not have seen before.