PITBoat
Petty Officer 1st Class
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2018
- Messages
- 286
So I have to confess that I got discouraged about not getting to my necessary maintenance list yet (rain on the weekends, work, being out of town, etc.), and decided to take the boat out for a run this past Wednesday (first outing since November at least). Then 2 or 3 things combined to make for a memorable ride.
Shortly after leaving the dock and pushing up the power, "There we were..."
...speed building, bow starting to develop a nasty bounce, and the power lever stuck at or near WOT...
We got out of it by killing the ignition. I didn't want to do that under those conditions, but there was no choice I could see, short of pulling harder on the lever. It probably flooded the carb, but it got us stopped. Probably made a pretty good show for the few people relaxing on shore too.
When I first added power the bow had risen pretty high and not come down quickly as expected, so I added more power, near or all the way to WOT. It started to come down a little and I tried to pull power back as usual when starting to plane out, but the lever was STUCK. It looked like it was going to get ugly after that.
It bothers me a little that the options had the ignition switch failed weren't good or many.
Here's what went wrong:
1 - Although I thought it was, the drive wasn't all the way down. I had stopped lowering at a squeal, instead of the squall that comes at full down. It took another run at part throttle (with the wind this time), to figure that out. The drive was completely submerged, and didn't look obviously wrong to me when checking it after, but nevertheless, it wasn't down all the way.
2 - The remote lever got hung up somehow; I think due to my not completely reassembling the plastic trim at the base, or the drive trim switch wiring after troubleshooting it. But maybe there was another reason? Possibly shift cable related? It came free easily after we stopped, and the carb linkage and travel seemed fine. Didn't give a hint of that last year during our 20 or so outings.
3 - It was all aggravated by the fact that the normal sight picture was different/limited because we were trying out the partial cover that came with the boat, that snaps on at the windshield negatively affecting the view forward and immediately to the sides.
After realizing I hadn't run the drive down all the way, we continued, staying at 3000-3500rpm and everything worked as remembered. The shifting was stiffish, with a need to pull back a bit beyond the Neutral detent to come out of Fwd, but otherwise it was going into and out of gear OK, w/o any bad noises.
Now that the weekend is here (and I have Saturday off this time), we've got... more storms on the way. Ah well.
Shortly after leaving the dock and pushing up the power, "There we were..."
...speed building, bow starting to develop a nasty bounce, and the power lever stuck at or near WOT...
We got out of it by killing the ignition. I didn't want to do that under those conditions, but there was no choice I could see, short of pulling harder on the lever. It probably flooded the carb, but it got us stopped. Probably made a pretty good show for the few people relaxing on shore too.
When I first added power the bow had risen pretty high and not come down quickly as expected, so I added more power, near or all the way to WOT. It started to come down a little and I tried to pull power back as usual when starting to plane out, but the lever was STUCK. It looked like it was going to get ugly after that.
It bothers me a little that the options had the ignition switch failed weren't good or many.
Here's what went wrong:
1 - Although I thought it was, the drive wasn't all the way down. I had stopped lowering at a squeal, instead of the squall that comes at full down. It took another run at part throttle (with the wind this time), to figure that out. The drive was completely submerged, and didn't look obviously wrong to me when checking it after, but nevertheless, it wasn't down all the way.
2 - The remote lever got hung up somehow; I think due to my not completely reassembling the plastic trim at the base, or the drive trim switch wiring after troubleshooting it. But maybe there was another reason? Possibly shift cable related? It came free easily after we stopped, and the carb linkage and travel seemed fine. Didn't give a hint of that last year during our 20 or so outings.
3 - It was all aggravated by the fact that the normal sight picture was different/limited because we were trying out the partial cover that came with the boat, that snaps on at the windshield negatively affecting the view forward and immediately to the sides.
After realizing I hadn't run the drive down all the way, we continued, staying at 3000-3500rpm and everything worked as remembered. The shifting was stiffish, with a need to pull back a bit beyond the Neutral detent to come out of Fwd, but otherwise it was going into and out of gear OK, w/o any bad noises.
Now that the weekend is here (and I have Saturday off this time), we've got... more storms on the way. Ah well.
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