Will not go into gear

[Popeye2]

The bolts connecting one leg under the engine to the boat were loose.
Engine still bolted well to saildrive.
Disconnected the cable and put it in gear below. Then moved the prop. It moved with a little more difficulty than when it was in neutral. Is this normal? In reverse gear it moved with a little more difficulty.
All the bolts are rotten. How can i open the saildrive?

[DougR]

When in neutral the prop should free wheel fairly easily in either direction.

When you put it in gear, the prop might be able to be turned in one direction with some amount of drag, but very difficult or impossible to turn in the opposite direction. Same for the other gear selection, but the turning directions will be reversed. If you can turn it with light drag in both directions, I would suspect a spun prop hub.

If you have a Volvo fixed two or three blade prop and the hub is spun, you should be able to see the prop shaft nut or prop cone and see that the blades are turning but the shaft isn't. This will be a dead giveaway that the hub is spun.
If you have some other type of prop where you can't see the shaft, you might have to remove the prop and clamp something like vice grips on the shaft to make a determination. Protect the shaft splines with a couple of pieces of wood.

If the prop seems good you can move on to the engine damper plate or the saildrive itself. I think I would check the damper plate first, for two reasons:
- if there is damage it's usually easy to tell that something is wrong....straight forward mechanical damage
- if there is nothing wrong with the damper plate/drive system you are left with the saildrive and probably it's going to need to be removed anyway, so you're half way there already.

Removing the shift mechanism cover on the side of the Saildrive entails removing the four bolts that hold the plate to the side of the housing and tapping & carefully prying the cover off. Probably will require six point sockets to get the bolts loose without rounding the points. As mentioned earlier the shift shoe mounts in the shifter and is moved up and down by the motion of the cable. Note that the shift shoe only goes in one way. If you rotate it 180 the cover won't seat. Everything should in position to move the shift cone up and down so that it comes in contact with the forward and reverse " cup". I would think a complete shift failure should be evident in something like the shift shoe head being broken off of its shaft., but perhaps severe galling of the shoe and its mating groove in the cone could be enough to cause a problem, but failure all at one time??

Hope this helps some.

DougR

[Popeye2]

Originally Posted by DougR

When in neutral the prop should free wheel fairly easily in either direction.

When you put it in gear, the prop might be able to be turned in one direction with some amount of drag, but very difficult or impossible to turn in the opposite direction. Same for the other gear selection, but the turning directions will be reversed. If you can turn it with light drag in both directions, I would suspect a spun prop hub.

If you have a Volvo fixed two or three blade prop and the hub is spun, you should be able to see the prop shaft nut or prop cone and see that the blades are turning but the shaft isn't. This will be a dead giveaway that the hub is spun.
If you have some other type of prop where you can't see the shaft, you might have to remove the prop and clamp something like vice grips on the shaft to make a determination. Protect the shaft splines with a couple of pieces of wood.

If the prop seems good you can move on to the engine damper plate or the saildrive itself. I think I would check the damper plate first, for two reasons:
- if there is damage it's usually easy to tell that something is wrong....straight forward mechanical damage
- if there is nothing wrong with the damper plate/drive system you are left with the saildrive and probably it's going to need to be removed anyway, so you're half way there already.

Removing the shift mechanism cover on the side of the Saildrive entails removing the four bolts that hold the plate to the side of the housing and tapping & carefully prying the cover off. Probably will require six point sockets to get the bolts loose without rounding the points. As mentioned earlier the shift shoe mounts in the shifter and is moved up and down by the motion of the cable. Note that the shift shoe only goes in one way. If you rotate it 180 the cover won't seat. Everything should in position to move the shift cone up and down so that it comes in contact with the forward and reverse " cup". I would think a complete shift failure should be evident in something like the shift shoe head being broken off of its shaft., but perhaps severe galling of the shoe and its mating groove in the cone could be enough to cause a problem, but failure all at one time??

Hope this helps some.

DougR

Thanks. Prop is moving too freely in gear. It is otherwise fine. The spines on the shaft are fine. So next would be the adapter plate between engine and saildrive. One leg under the engine had become loose so perhaps the engine moved. Could this have resulted in a wrong angle engine to saildrive and so break something in the plate in between?
Something. I could see without moving the engi e?

[DougR]

I don't think one loose engine mount would cause a change in the relationship between the engine and saildrive, as they should be bolted solidly together. So I doubt this has anything to do with the problem...whatever it is.

DougR

[Popeye2]

Found the problem. Inside the adapter it came apart, slightly damaging the plastic. I think I can put it back together with something to prevent it fall out again.

[a64pilot]

Good, hopefully just some work and not a whole lot of money then

[DougR]

Not sure, but this appears to be an R&D brand of torsional damper. The drive and driven plates of most R&D dampers are held together by a snap ring which is located in a groove on the neck of the driven plate which protrudes thru the drive plate. Check out the R&D website and you can get an idea of their assembly.

The snap ring has probably failed and allowed the driven plate to work its way aft away from the torsional element until the three drive pins disengaged from the element. The pins then machined the grooves which we see in the element and finally disengaged totally from the element and you lost drive power.

If you pull the front half of the damper from the flywheel you will probably find the remains of the snap ring and its adjacent washer.

DougR

[Popeye2]

There was nothing but the grace of God holding that disc in place. Put a grub screw 5m in. Put it all back together and everything works fine now. Thanks to all, especially Doug, for guiding me through this repair and enabling me to avoid the boatyard. When it first happened I called a local mechanic and he told me to go to the boatyard as it could not be fixed with the boat in the water. This forum saved me.