Working with Manual Tilt. Anyone do mods?

[Mark42]

The 85hp Force on my Bayliner has no power tilt. Even worse, they didn't even include a slave cylinder to help lift up the 300lbs of motor when you need to tilt it.​

I often found myself in a situation where just tilting up a few inches would have been a big help. But instead, I had to use the boat hook fully extended and use it to push off the bottom into deeper water. Not fun when the wind or current are against you.​

So I was looking at the tilt locking mechanism, and its just a flat stock bar with a notch cut in it for full up tilt lock. Wondering if anyone has modified or replaced this bar so that the motor could be locked in 3 or 4 locations. That would be great for backing away from beaches, pulling in to shallow locations, anywhere slow going in shallow water is needed.​

I think I'm going to keep this Force for a while, and this is something that needs addressing.​

Right now I am not going to invest a few hundred dollars into a used power tilt off ebay with questionable condition and useable life. Right now I'm looking at low budget solutions to shallow water running with this motor.​

 

[RRitt]

Re: Working with Manual Tilt. Anyone do mods?

1/2" X 12" galvanized bolt and a bag full of super heavy duty zip-ty's does the trick for me.

 

[Frank Acampora]

Re: Working with Manual Tilt. Anyone do mods?

Modifying that lock bar with its itty bitty 5/16 bolts is just asking for trouble. First the bolts wer never designed for anything except holding the engine tilted in storage and second the bar itself is relatively thin sheet stock and only on one side of the engine. Third, If you try to use reverse, it will pop out and the engine will fall.

Chrysler did make a tilt bar that plugged into the tilt pin holes on the engine clamps. It seated against the yoke right where the existing tilt pin seats. With a little ingenuity, you can make one out of some bar stock and some 1/2 inch round stock. Then you can make it to the exact tilt angle you desire.

If you have access to a welder, you can make it simpler and stronger, but a bolt together piece will work.

It will be much more rugged and will be able to lock the engine so you could use reverse with it tilted too.

Send me a private message with your email and I will send you a photo of one. Unless someone can tell me how to reduce photo size on MICROSOFT VISTA then I can post them here.

 

[Mark42]

Re: Working with Manual Tilt. Anyone do mods?

Thanks Frank! Actually I wondered how that little tilt lock held the motor at all! I'll have to look at the pin holes and see what I can come up with using your description. You wouldn't happen to have a photo or diagram of the part, would you?

Thanks again!

Mark

 

[RRitt]

Re: Working with Manual Tilt. Anyone do mods?

i still like the galvanized bolt. there are four holes in each transom clamp for trailering bar. For my boat, second hole up is where i would trim to 99.9% of the time. So there it is. Permanently. Since my boat is on a lift I never have to cut the ty wraps. Of course ... things would be different if I had not moved both batteries to front of boat. The she wouldn't sit level and I would need change trim angle as I got up on plane. But with batteries up front and a lift at home the boat is almost always at same angle from WOT to idle to parked.