Evinrude hydraulic lift issue

I have a 1987 40 horse Evinrude outboard motor. It has a hydraulic lift system that raises and lowers it into the water. I noticed an issue with the hydraulics 3 weeks ago when I used my boat and had left it in the water for 3 days. Because of where I was at I had to have the motor out of the water while I had it beached. I had raised the lower unit out of the water as far as I could and then left the boat. Later I went back to the boat and the lower unit was back down in the water. I thought this odd and raised it back up not thinking anything of it. Again later my son tells me its back down and sure enough it was. So I raised it back up and then propped it up with a block of wood to keep it out of the water.

Now this last weekend. We went fishing this weekend and I noticed something odd about lowering the motor into the water. I had it propped up about half way because of the transom saver and when we launched it into the water I went to lower it all the way down into the water. Now the sound this system makes when I reach the end of the lowering is different from its normal free movement sound. It?s like a higher pitch noise. Oddly enough about half way down into the water it started making a high pitch sound and acted like it was having trouble lowing it into the water. But I could tell it still had several inches to go before it was all the way down. So I held the switch and it slowly went all the way down and then made a different high pitch noise when it was all the way down.

So does anyone have ANY idea what might be going on? Is it something simple like adding fluid or is it something bad like a pump going out?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Re: Evinrude hydraulic lift issue

Raise it all the way up and check the fluid level in it. Then cycle it up and down and check the level again

Re: Evinrude hydraulic lift issue

Thanks Boobie I'll check it this weekend.