khun

Thank you, but I finally found a very helpful serviceman at Whipple Superchargers in California! I got him on the phone and talked for maybe 15min with him. He actually knew about this problem and had fixed a few of those PCMs. Here are the details: A: Yes, you can burn something inside the PCM on certain old Optimax engines if you start it with the lanyard switch off. But not a fuse, it is the whole alarm circuit that gets fried. B: When this happens, you will have a continuous alarm tone as soon as the key is turned on. C: This can be repaired, but it's not very easy. To open the PCM, you need to apply force, more or less bend open the metal plate and cut off some silicon inside as you go. So we could rule out the lanyard switch/broken alarm as the problem on our boat, since the alarm is a contiuous _series_ of beeps and starts about 30s after turning the engine on. I now have placed the PCM back and actually happened to find a guy here with equipment to read the error code, he will come by tomorrow.

Well, seems there isn't any service shop in Norway that opens these things. And after a few tries, it doesn't seem like any foreign service people are very eager to share this kind of information. So unless someone here has any concrete advice, I am stuck with either using force and risking to destroy it or sending it off abroad for repair, which will again take some amount of money and time.

Hi! We have a Mercury Optimax 150 from 2003, that suddenly has started to give a constant alarm about half a minute after starting. After much googling, I found this article on this forum: http://www.fishraider.com.au/Invision/index.php?showtopic=54324&hl=%2Boptimax+%2Becm, which seems like it _could_ be the answer to our problems. And easy to try, simply changing a fuse! So I took off the PCM, but can't the thing opened! It looks exactly like this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mercury-DFI-ECM-200-225-hp-2000-01-858891T-29-858891-29-858891T-2-858891-16/191817100619?_trksid=p2047675.c100623.m-1&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160323102634%26meid%3Dacceeef4ea54437694b955076721f384%26pid%3D100623%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D190514500854 So it has a hard plastic frame with a metal plate sort of wrapped around it. I am guessing I should be able to "slid off" the metal part, but it simply is stuck. When I try with force, I start to bend the plate or brake the plastic, so I don't want to go that way. I get lot of links to repair shops fixing PCMs, so it has to be possible to open somehow! I am hoping someone here could give me a clue. Second question follows naturally: if I manage to get it apart without breaking anything, find a fuse and change it, is there some special procedure to putting it all together again, to avoid salt water/air entering and then having a totally ruined PCM sometime in the near future? Two of the screws on it broke when I unscrewed them, but I think that could be fixed. P.S.1: Yes, of course, I should bring it to someplace they can read the error code etc etc. But that is a procedure that takes much hazzle, costs quite a lot of money (probably more than getting a used PCM) and it will take a long time before the boat is usable again. P.S.2: Yes, of course I could buy a used PCM on eBay or somewhere else. But that will again take some time, cost quite a bit of money and I don't even know for sure there is anything wrong with it! Best regards, Knut