OMC Stringer 400 Tilts Down too quick.

[technochris]

Hello Forum,

Me and my father are new owners of an 1980 190 Century, OMC 140 (GM 181ci 4-cylinder), OMC Stringer 400 Outdrive. The previous owner was "superbenk" here on the forum.

My current issue is that the Motor Tilt Up/Down seems to be operating bad. The Tilt up works Great every time, But only a tap on the switch sends the outdrive down quickly. Its SO quick, it goes all the way down and seems to Jam in the down position, and not go up after the slam down. Re installing the quadrant gear a couple teeth up, allows the motor to lift the outdrive again. If i Assist the Outdrive Down with a rope, and if it doesn't slam down, then the outdrive will operate up an down.

Before opening the Tilt clutch or worm gear areas, is there anyone who might have experienced this?

I know ill need gaskets and such before opening, so ill need to order parts ahead of time. Thanks all for your input.

 

[Howard Sterndrive]

tough to say if that's normal or not. I mean they do that. Most stringer owners develop a method of sneaking up on that switch and bumping it ever so briefly.

If that's impossible you'll want to make sure the relay isn't sticking a bit beofre you start opening things up on the drive. You could swap it with the up relay.

 

[technochris]

Ill try that next, Thanks.

 

[user-name]

When I R&R my outdrive my OD came down so fast I thought i knocked the boat off the trailer.. broke the lift motor. blah blah

What turned out was that I didnt tighten down the parts that look like bearing caps all the way.

 

[bruceb58]

You have to lower it in steps with taps of the button. It's not quite as bad when its in the water.

 

[superbenk]

Frustrating I didn't see this until just now. Sent a PM to the OP but thought I'd share here too for completeness. I think the relays are fine but the do have a tendency to drop quick especially out of the water. The reason it gets stuck is that the shaft going into the clutch housing has a tiny but of movement (maybe the bushing where it exits the housing is worn) allowing it to get bound up against the quadrant gear (teeth get crooked). Only solution I found was to be really careful not to drop it too quick by using really small taps of the switch. You can also usually free it if it does get stuck by having someone tug up & down on the drive while holding the switch up. I'm not sure if that bushing is replaceable or if you could machine a new one, but that'd probably be the fix. Another thought I had when I had the boat was to fabricate some rubber bumpers where the two aligning pins go into the intermediate housing to keep it from stopping so hard (or maybe a bigger/fatter rubber o-ring on the exhaust hole to do the same thing. One other thing to note & something I mentioned in the sale is that I had pinned the clutch pack so it doesn't give (the clutch plates or tension spring plates are probably worn out). I had to do that to make the tilt work reliably otherwise the clutch pack would just spin. This obviously has the downside of not allowing the drive to give if you hit something nor does it allow for it to "bounce" when its slams down hard. If your motivated, you could probably remove the pin from the clutch pack & add a spacer to increase the tension to get it back to original working condition. Otherwise you'd have to find a new clutch pack which I had a hard time doing.