After a month of trials and hassles trying to first remove and then repair my old tilt/trim unit, I got a tilt/trim unit last week from eBay. Huge discount, and when I received I found out why. The lower mounting pin was stuck in the unit. I contacted the seller and they explained that “all” I had to do was disassemble the transom bracket and slide it in.
Without an engine hoist, and assuming that even with the engine in the air, getting that bracket apart was going to be a huge headache, I took the part down to a machine shop yesterday and they were able to use a large press to punch out the pin. Cheers!!
Last night I did a pseudo install to see if after all the fuss, I was going to have a working unit. I installed just the lower pin and the servo wires and happily, when I plugged it in and hit the relay, it responded by raising the main piston up and down perfectly.
So, on to the question… when I removed the old assembly, I got a little “snip-happy” in removing the old wiring. My plan was to restore it all when I re-installed. Well I did a great job on the blue green pair that drive the servo motor, and an even better job on the pair that route from the limit switch. That’s the problem, I did a really thorough job of installing crimp connectors with heat shrink over the connections, and then heat shrink over the pair, and then a nice split plastic protective cover over the whole thing; but…. I lost track of the wire colors.
So the question is, what does that limit switch do? I “thought” it sensed when the motor was getting lower and applied a step-down to the servo drive. In the past, I’ve noticed that when the lower unit is almost down the servo changes speeds. That is, it goes fast until it reaches the last couple inches of travel, and then slows down until it gets to the bottom. When it gets to the bottom, it doesn’t stop, but you can hear the motor labor. That’s the way it worked before anyway. I’m not sure if the change in lift speed was triggered by that limit switch or by the small pistons that engage at about that same point (or maybe the two work in concert?).
At any rate, my plan was to plug the thing in, raise and lower the motor a couple times and see what happened. I figured if I have the limit switch wired backwards, the thing would perform just like before, but in reverse. So, like I said the main piston raised and lowered beautifully last night, but when I triggered the limit switch manually, it didn’t affect the motor speed either way; it seemed to have no effect at all.
So lacking any additional insight, I removed the tilt trim unit and prepped it for paint. Got the primer on last night and applied a top coat this morning, so I'm hoptin to install it tonight. I’m curious about how the limit switch and those two smaller pistons are supposed to work. Can someone tell me how they all are supposed to work together? I guess it’s possible that the limit switch is not functioning. I could put a meter on the leads while manually triggering the switch, but I’m not sure what I’m looking for. For instance, does the limit switch only do something when the relay is working?
Sadly, no clues on this end.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
JPK
Without an engine hoist, and assuming that even with the engine in the air, getting that bracket apart was going to be a huge headache, I took the part down to a machine shop yesterday and they were able to use a large press to punch out the pin. Cheers!!
Last night I did a pseudo install to see if after all the fuss, I was going to have a working unit. I installed just the lower pin and the servo wires and happily, when I plugged it in and hit the relay, it responded by raising the main piston up and down perfectly.
So, on to the question… when I removed the old assembly, I got a little “snip-happy” in removing the old wiring. My plan was to restore it all when I re-installed. Well I did a great job on the blue green pair that drive the servo motor, and an even better job on the pair that route from the limit switch. That’s the problem, I did a really thorough job of installing crimp connectors with heat shrink over the connections, and then heat shrink over the pair, and then a nice split plastic protective cover over the whole thing; but…. I lost track of the wire colors.
So the question is, what does that limit switch do? I “thought” it sensed when the motor was getting lower and applied a step-down to the servo drive. In the past, I’ve noticed that when the lower unit is almost down the servo changes speeds. That is, it goes fast until it reaches the last couple inches of travel, and then slows down until it gets to the bottom. When it gets to the bottom, it doesn’t stop, but you can hear the motor labor. That’s the way it worked before anyway. I’m not sure if the change in lift speed was triggered by that limit switch or by the small pistons that engage at about that same point (or maybe the two work in concert?).
At any rate, my plan was to plug the thing in, raise and lower the motor a couple times and see what happened. I figured if I have the limit switch wired backwards, the thing would perform just like before, but in reverse. So, like I said the main piston raised and lowered beautifully last night, but when I triggered the limit switch manually, it didn’t affect the motor speed either way; it seemed to have no effect at all.
So lacking any additional insight, I removed the tilt trim unit and prepped it for paint. Got the primer on last night and applied a top coat this morning, so I'm hoptin to install it tonight. I’m curious about how the limit switch and those two smaller pistons are supposed to work. Can someone tell me how they all are supposed to work together? I guess it’s possible that the limit switch is not functioning. I could put a meter on the leads while manually triggering the switch, but I’m not sure what I’m looking for. For instance, does the limit switch only do something when the relay is working?
Sadly, no clues on this end.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
JPK