kicker grounds the boat

[Jooky]

Trying to keep the voltage out of my tin can and only in the wires.... I was hooking up a new washdown pump and discovered my kicker is grounding the boat. Had my washdown pluged into the positive and the negative was laying on the metal floor and the dang thing turned on. started unhooking each connection on the battery until got to the kicker.. So is this normal for electric start engines to make the whole boat negatively charged?

[fish_on]

yep, the ground for the starter is the engine block and the engine is bolted to the hull so the hull is grounded to the battery through the engine.

[Grain of Salt]

Most are this way, wrong, but easy for the installers.

It is possible to isolate the engines and ground to the batteries tho...cept you will get some "jumping" of current with saltwater spay...no complete fix but it can be reduced to lessen the risk of alka-seltzer boat.
Switch your primary starting leading with a blue seas or perko switch and leave it off unless using it.

[Smj]

My kicker has a transom saver pad between it and the hull, it's a rubber/carpeted sort of thing. Then you'll need to run a seperate ground for the kicker.

Smj