Thread: Kill switch

I am wondering if the alarm is indicating another problem related to the ehgine such as a water pump, oil pressure issues causing the engine to get hot?

Originally Posted by jigfisherx

My son has a new ski boat with an unusual electrical problem. When running the boat performs fine but after a short time a red light and an alarm sounds. He can make it stop by stopping the boat, pulling the kill switch lanyard and resetting the kill switch.
Physically, pulling the lanyard kills the boat as expected but when the alarm sounds, the boat will continue to run with the annoying alarm. The only way to restore is by pulling the kill lanyard and resetting. This is a very expensive boat with a lot of high end electrical.
My thought is to order a new kill switch and replace that before taking the boat into a shop at shop $rates.
Any input is welcome. I have not actually seen the problem, just talked it out over the phone.


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if it’s new it might be under warranty. I’d check that out and if it is, let them fix it.

Originally Posted by BuckeyeCrappie

I am wondering if the alarm is indicating another problem related to the ehgine such as a water pump, oil pressure issues causing the engine to get hot?

This is what I was thinking too. Mine will set off if there’s not enough oil, etc.. and I can only stop the alarm by doing something similar.


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Usually, the alarm goes off because there is an actual engine issue. While I didn’t try the kill switch reset, last year I confirmed that my alarm was over temp issues that reset once I killed the engine to let the engine rest a bit or idle down to run more water to let the engine cool. My issue ended up being the diverter tubes expanding over then 39 years to the point that it was blocking water cooling as intended. If the boat and engine are under warranty, get the shop to figure it out.


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I'm agree with jjue. I had the same issue. At full, throttle alarm went off because not enough water was flowing. Slow down to get more flowing it would be fine for awhile. I would have to shut it down to reset the alarm. I ended up needing new water pump. My boat was new also but this was a screw up at factory & covered under warranty. I would get it in & checked out before more damage.

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Still a problem but more information. The alarm goes off at the exact time the rpm reaches 3000. This boat is a big inboard that still will run when it starts buzzing but reminds me of an old merc 40hp that would run for a short time on plane then just die. Turned out to be a corroded water line that would leak until it would shut the motor off. As soon as you remove the coweling the water would have drained off to where the motor would run again.


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Scan tool is your friend, the codes will be stored in the ECM, It might be a bad sensor, might be something worse. I wouldn’t use it until the problem is fixed.