Check Shift Actuator Volvo D4 EVC

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Simon391088

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Hi,

Visited Lymington at the weekend. Doing a turn on the spot (twin engine outdrives) - with lots of expensive boats parked all around.

Put Rudder hard to starboard, port engine in forward, starboard astern. Suddenly loud continuous beep, no power from starboard engine.
Message says 'Check Shift Actuator' on Starboard engine dial.
(D4 260hp).

I managed to back out using Port engine and briefly tie to the ferry quay.
Quickly got starboard engine going again. - not totally sure how - under pressure from harbour master to get out of the way of the ferry!

No further problems for entire weekend.

Questions....
1. What happened?
2. I'm not even sure that the starboard engine stopped, I think it might have still been running but failing to get into gear. I have a feeling that I should have acknowledged the beep by pressing the evc button and then tried to engage Gear again, but I assumed the engine had stopped - you don't have much time in such situations!
3. The boat (2nd hand) is still under warranty) what needs to be done?

Any thoughts welcome.

Many Thanks
Simon
 
Without wanting to state the obvious, didn't you check the rev counters to see if the starboard engine was infact still running?

What needs to be done you ask? well I would find a secluded safe area and try the exact same manouvre again to see if it replicates then take things from there?
 
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On some engines, the rev counter will still stay in the position that it was last operating at before it stopped, ie usually idle, so it can be beneficial to check the oil pressure gauge at the same time, if the engine has stopped, oil pressure will always read zero.

Graham
 
I'm afraid I don't have experience of the D4 - but on the D6, forwardf/reverse gear is selected via a mechanical cable in the top of the leg which travels through the transom shield and back to a linear actuator. This linear actuator is the shift actuator and it is controlled by the EVC. If there are probs selecting the gear, the EVC system detects excessive current draw by the actuator and reports the fault as 'check shift actuator'.

I had this happen to me about 18 months ago, and the root cause of the problem was a sticky transmission selector in the top of the leg. This transmission selector is a relatively cheap part - but the problem is that the actuator isn't very robust, and after a couple of warnings it just burnt out - and iirc that was a £700 part to replace. A bit of a stupid design where the expensive component sacrifices itself to save the cheap component.

At a guess your transmission is getting sticky, and although the problem with the selector was limited to early D6 legs, cable problems are universal - so the way to test this is to disconnect the cable from the actuator, and see if you can select and deselect the transmission by hand (it should be fairly easy). If it's tricky then I'd look at replacing the cable as a cheapish first step. Again, I don't know the position with the D4, but with the D6 the cable spec has been uprated by Volvo.

What I wouldn't do though is nothing - if you do have a fault, then if the actuator fails it will get expensive quite quickly - in my case it was two selectors, a cable, an actuator and a lift. £2k.

Cheers
Jimmy
 
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Hi,

Sadly not. I realise it seems obvious now, but suddenly and unexpectedly losing power when manauvering right next to other boats focuses the mind more on getting out of the situation rather than identifying the actual fault. I'm 90% sure it was still running though.

If it happens again, i'll be much better prepared to see what is actually going on.

Thanks
Simon
 
Failing shift actuators is a fairly common problem on these engines, but as per James Le Constructeurs post, it's worth checking for sticky cables or the selector first. The D4 mechanism is pretty much identical to the D6.
It might run fine for another few weeks or months, and then fail completely.

It's worth getting it sorted under warranty if at all possible, as a new actuator is an £800 part.
 
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jimmy_the_builder said:
I'm afraid I don't have experience of the D4 - but on the D6, forwardf/reverse gear is selected via a mechanical cable in the top of the leg which travels through the transom shield and back to a linear actuator. This linear actuator is the shift actuator and it is controlled by the EVC. If there are probs selecting the gear, the EVC system detects excessive current draw by the actuator and reports thefault as 'check shift actuator'.

I had this happen to me about 18 months ago, and the root cause of the problem was a sticky transmission selector in the top of the leg. This transmission selector is a relatively cheap part - but the problem is that the actuator isn't very robust, and after a couple of warning it just burnt out - and iirc that was a £700 part to replace. A bit of a stupid design where the expensive component sacrifices itself to save the cheap component.

At a guess your transmission is getting sticky, and although the problem with the selector was limited to early D6 legs, cable problems are universal - so the way to test this is to disconnect the cable from the actuator, and see if you can select and deselect the transmission by hand (it should be fairly easy). If it's tricky then I'd look at replacing the cable as a cheapish first step. Again, I don't know the position with the D4, but with the D6 the cable spec has been uprated by Volvo.

What I wouldn't do though is nothing - if you do have a fault, then if the actuator fails it will get expensive quite quickly - in my case it was two selectors, a cable, an actuator and a lift. £2k.

Cheers
Jimmy
Click to expand...

With such a consice response as this I would print it off and show to whoever has provided the warrenty....get them changed or at least checked FOC ?
 
jimmy_the_builder said:
I'm afraid I don't have experience of the D4 - but on the D6, forwardf/reverse gear is selected via a mechanical cable in the top of the leg which travels through the transom shield and back to a linear actuator. This linear actuator is the shift actuator and it is controlled by the EVC. If there are probs selecting the gear, the EVC system detects excessive current draw by the actuator and reports the fault as 'check shift actuator'.

I had this happen to me about 18 months ago, and the root cause of the problem was a sticky transmission selector in the top of the leg. This transmission selector is a relatively cheap part - but the problem is that the actuator isn't very robust, and after a couple of warnings it just burnt out - and iirc that was a £700 part to replace. A bit of a stupid design where the expensive component sacrifices itself to save the cheap component.

At a guess your transmission is getting sticky, and although the problem with the selector was limited to early D6 legs, cable problems are universal - so the way to test this is to disconnect the cable from the actuator, and see if you can select and deselect the transmission by hand (it should be fairly easy). If it's tricky then I'd look at replacing the cable as a cheapish first step. Again, I don't know the position with the D4, but with the D6 the cable spec has been uprated by Volvo.

What I wouldn't do though is nothing - if you do have a fault, then if the actuator fails it will get expensive quite quickly - in my case it was two selectors, a cable, an actuator and a lift. £2k.

Cheers
Jimmy
Click to expand...

I've had exactly the same on my D4. The sticky shift cable led to the actuator dying. I am told that it is possible to pinch the shift cable when the leg is refitted after a service and that was what had caused the excess strain on my shift cable and actuator. It was made doubly frustrating as I have the earlier EVC A so no real message re the actuator, the engine would shut down as the EVC could not determine the throttle position as usually I was just in the process of mooring the boat. It took ages to diagnose, engineers thought is was first low voltage driving the ecu, so new battery bank, followed by suspected fuel contamination. It would only occur once the engine and gear box were properly warm say after an hour of use, then it would repeatedly shut down as I shifted in out of neutral.
 
wakeup said:
I've had exactly the same on my D4. The sticky shift cable led to the actuator dying. I am told that it is possible to pinch the shift cable when the leg is refitted after a service and that was what had caused the excess strain on my shift cable and actuator. It was made doubly frustrating as I have the earlier EVC A so no real message re the actuator, the engine would shut down as the EVC could not determine the throttle position as usually I was just in the process of mooring the boat. It took ages to diagnose, engineers thought is was first low voltage driving the ecu, so new battery bank, followed by suspected fuel contamination. It would only occur once the engine and gear box were properly warm say after an hour of use, then it would repeatedly shut down as I shifted in out of neutral.
Click to expand...

We had exactly the same problem! fortunatly for us we had an engineer on board at the time (and a couple of powerboat instructors) who were able to diagnose the problem almost immediatly!
 
Out of interest - Jimmy, 'Wakeup' and Z1ppy.
When you had this problem, did the engine stop or could you acknowledge the error and successfully put it into gear again?
Thanks
Simon
 
Nope, the engine doesn't stop. Depending on what the nature of the fault is, you can acknowledge the warning and carry on. However, per my previous, the actuators are relatively fragile and it won't take too many attempts of the actuator to pull a constricted cable for the actuator to fail. So don't keep clearing the errors - get it looked at. The manual test I suggested is really easy, you just need a pair of pliers to pull out the little locking pin that connects the cable to the actuator. (In my case the selector was actually jamming in the top of the leg, and I think I tried three times to put it in gear - and that was it for the actuator).

Cheers
Jimmy
 
Simon391088 said:
Out of interest - Jimmy, 'Wakeup' and Z1ppy.
When you had this problem, did the engine stop or could you acknowledge the error and successfully put it into gear again?
Thanks
Simon
Click to expand...

No on mine the engine cut out with a non specific warning and no useful error code on the 8 lamp round engine info dial, tried looking up code in book but very nondescript. The engineers could not decipher using the void tool either. I could restart immediately though using ignition key. I think this was because the wear/damage to the actuator was advanced and also the EVC was rev A only.
 
Thanks for this Jimmy,
The brokers I bought the boat from are hopefully sorting it out this week under the warranty. I'm staying out of getting my own hands dirty until I have no other option. If I try it the 'locking pin' or some other part will inevitably fly into the sea or similar. :)
I am hoping they find and fix a clear problem with it.
Thanks
Simon
 
Ok - but in that case you want to make sure someone is on there with a vodia tool to get the exact code and cause out of the EVC. Good luck - let us know how you get on.

Cheers
Jimmy
 
Simon391088 said:
They are going to plug in the diagnostics. Out of interest, how specific will the information from that be?
Thanks
Simon
Click to expand...

I think it depends upon the version of EVC. If it is a recent engine e.g. last 3 or so years then I think they will get useful info. If it is pre 2006 then very little.
 
wakeup said:
I think it depends upon the version of EVC. If it is a recent engine e.g. last 3 or so years then I think they will get useful info. If it is pre 2006 then very little.
Click to expand...

Yep agreed, if it's A or B then I think you basically just get a superset of the error codes that flash on the EVC control panel, don't you? EVC-C and onwards is where it seems to get useful.

Cheers
Jimmy
 
sorry for the delay, as others have said, seems to be the difference betweeen old and new.

Engine cut out on Aviator when we had this problem. would always start againg but as you say, loosing power at just the wrong time is sods law!!

hopefully you can get someone in to sort the problem for you! looks like the collective forum may have made their job a little easier!!
 
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