This is my first time posting on this forum. My grandfather passed away recently and left me two 20' boats with OMC electric shift stern drives, plus a third intermediate housing and third complete stern drive as spares. He had replaced all of the stringers and the deck on one of the boats and I am now trying to get it put back together. It is a 1976 20 ft Hydroswift (HIN HYD300401176) with a Ford 351 windsor marine engine and an OMC stern drive. I believe it is called the electric shift model from reading other posts on this forum. Well I put the motor and stern back in and hooked everything up as best as I could figure out from the manual and was able to start the motor just by spraying starting fluid in the carb. I only let it run for about a second because it was out of the water and I just wanted to see if it would attempt to start. Right now I am still having electrical problems that I cannot figure out though.
1st. The shift switch is broken. I had to bypass it completely to get the starter to turn over. When the motor attempted to start with starting fluid, the prop spun meaning that it was in gear. When I opened up the throttle/shift lever assembly, I found that the switch was literally cracked in halve. I know they are hard to come by and expensive so I was thinking that I could just make my own switches on the dashboard for foward/reverse/neutral and make sure I only change gears at idle. The existing lever would still work for the throttle. Is this possible or am I better off searching for a new switch or is there another option that I do not know of? If it is possible, I see that there is a green wire for forward and a blue for reverse, but I'm not sure how they operate and how to get it in neutral. Does it need a contant power supply to stay in gear and no power is neutral or how does it operate?
2nd. I cannot get the tilt to work. If I press the tilt either up or down, I get a clicking coming from the solenoids and the tilt motor does nothing. I have tested the terminals where the solenoids connect to the battery and they each have 12 volts. The small terminals are connected to the switch in the dash and I have tested both of them and they also get 12 volts when the correct up/down is pressed on the switch (and they click). The large terminals that connect to the tilt motor are confusing me though. When I press the tilt down, both the up and down solenoids have 12 volts. When I press the tilt up, neither have any power. I am talking about the terminals that the two wires coming out of the tilt motor are connected to. I am assuming that one wire should move the motor in the up direction and the other down, but I may be wrong. After that I tried to hot wire the tilt motor directly by touching a positive wire to each one of the two wires coming out of the tilt motor (again assuming that one wire is up and the other is down). I just got sparks from where I touched the wires and no movement from the tilt motor. Am I testing this correctly and making the right assumption that it is the tilt motor that is bad? If not, what should I do?
3rd. The tach gauge needle moves all the way to the right whenever the key is turned. I don't know if this is normal or not and I want to get the rest of my problems fixed before I worry about this. My only question is can this problem affect anything else with my wiring and can I just unplug it for now or does it need to be corrected to solve other electrical problems?
I am taking on this project mainly because I have many relatives with 1970's OMC sterndrives and we all have extra parts (even though OMC is not my personal favorite manufacturer). By putting this one together, I am learning how they work so that I can also help them with any mechanical problems they come by. Thank you all for having such a great forum and sorry if my post was rather long.
1st. The shift switch is broken. I had to bypass it completely to get the starter to turn over. When the motor attempted to start with starting fluid, the prop spun meaning that it was in gear. When I opened up the throttle/shift lever assembly, I found that the switch was literally cracked in halve. I know they are hard to come by and expensive so I was thinking that I could just make my own switches on the dashboard for foward/reverse/neutral and make sure I only change gears at idle. The existing lever would still work for the throttle. Is this possible or am I better off searching for a new switch or is there another option that I do not know of? If it is possible, I see that there is a green wire for forward and a blue for reverse, but I'm not sure how they operate and how to get it in neutral. Does it need a contant power supply to stay in gear and no power is neutral or how does it operate?
2nd. I cannot get the tilt to work. If I press the tilt either up or down, I get a clicking coming from the solenoids and the tilt motor does nothing. I have tested the terminals where the solenoids connect to the battery and they each have 12 volts. The small terminals are connected to the switch in the dash and I have tested both of them and they also get 12 volts when the correct up/down is pressed on the switch (and they click). The large terminals that connect to the tilt motor are confusing me though. When I press the tilt down, both the up and down solenoids have 12 volts. When I press the tilt up, neither have any power. I am talking about the terminals that the two wires coming out of the tilt motor are connected to. I am assuming that one wire should move the motor in the up direction and the other down, but I may be wrong. After that I tried to hot wire the tilt motor directly by touching a positive wire to each one of the two wires coming out of the tilt motor (again assuming that one wire is up and the other is down). I just got sparks from where I touched the wires and no movement from the tilt motor. Am I testing this correctly and making the right assumption that it is the tilt motor that is bad? If not, what should I do?
3rd. The tach gauge needle moves all the way to the right whenever the key is turned. I don't know if this is normal or not and I want to get the rest of my problems fixed before I worry about this. My only question is can this problem affect anything else with my wiring and can I just unplug it for now or does it need to be corrected to solve other electrical problems?
I am taking on this project mainly because I have many relatives with 1970's OMC sterndrives and we all have extra parts (even though OMC is not my personal favorite manufacturer). By putting this one together, I am learning how they work so that I can also help them with any mechanical problems they come by. Thank you all for having such a great forum and sorry if my post was rather long.
... but back to my bother's boat. It had an OMC 800 stringer drive (Ford 351). The outdrive was an electric shift. We were out in it and the electric shift cable down to the outdrive got cut and we were stuck in one gear ... and it wasn't neutral. The default was forward.