Tilt Gauge

[jayhanig]

I recently had to have the hydraulic lines replaced on my I/O Mercruiser Galaxy because the outdrive no longer would reliably go up or down. The work involved pulling the engine and the outdrive so I had some additional work done while they had them out. I went out yesterday for the first time since the work was done and while everything worked great, I did notice a new and annoying behavior in the tilt gauge.

The way it used to work was it read the vertical position of the hard drive continuously as I operated the trim. You would see the needle rise or fall proportionately as I continued to press the button for the trim. That's the way I want it to work again. Instead, what's happening now is the needle sits at the top of the gauge as I press the button, then reads the level when I release the button. So to fine tune the trim, I have to constantly bump the button as I set the trim to get a sense of where the needle's really sitting.

I'm guessing a wire was misinstalled but wondering if this isn't something simple I could fix without having to drag the boat back to the mechanic. Any ideas? FWIW, although the boat is 30 years old, the gauge is only a couple of years old. The outdrive is an Alpha One.

 

[tpenfield]

Possibly could have the limit switch shorted to the trim sender. Mechanic should know better than to give you the boat back like that.

 

[64osby]

I would contact the tech before doing any work on it, just so they are aware of the issue. They might be able to provide a simple solution also.

 

[Fed]

I've had that problem but in reverse with an OMC trim gauge but keep in mind that OMC & Mercury gauges work in reverse to each other.
So, if you remove the sender wire from an OMC gauge it will peg down but if you remove the sender wire from a Mercury gauge it will peg up.

Having said that my problem was caused by the trim sender not being grounded properly due to a broken ground strap between the transom bracket and the engine block.

I'd check the grounding side of the trim sender for location & continuity and also ask a Mod to move this thread to the Mercruiser Section.

Some interesting reading...

The Trim Sender wires may not have any color sleeve or if they do, one side will have a brown sleeve.
Most motor wire harnesses have a Brown Wire with a White Stripe.
This Brown/White wire leads up the dash and fastens to the Sender Terminal on the back side of the Trim Gauge.
The wires from the Trim Sender switch plug into this Brown/White wire and a ground.
Older engines have a small screw-style terminal block to which these wires would fasten using the little bullet-to-ring connector
pigtails that are included in the trim Switch Kit.
The Brown/White wire runs to the trim gauge while the second wire fastens to a ground terminal screw.

http://www.sterndrives.com/supplies/mdtips06.html

You could also run a test wire from the sender ground connection point straight to the battery negative and see what it does.
Bad grounds can do some weird things.

 

[jayhanig]

I took the boat back today to get it corrected. I will post the solution once it's fixed so we can add this to our bank of knowledge. Thanks to everyone who responded.