Electric trim tabs

[David Allan]

I have four year old electric trim tabs on a Sealine S25 which have been hardly used - the boat has travelled only 200 miles. However, one of the trim tabs does not work. Does anyone have any ideas what I should check before thinking about taking the boat out the water and replacing the trim tab?

 

[splosh]

Just a few simple things to start with:-

If they are the all electric trim tabs then you may try operating the tab switch and listening for the whir of the electric motor. Remember to operate the oposite switch as the tabs are wired that the port switch operates the starbord actuator and vica versa.

Also, does your trim tab switch panel have incremental leds on either side thus more tabs down then more leds illuminated?

Or, has the connecting bolt and nut from the end of the ram actuator to the trim tab plate come undone and the tab just hanging in the water?.

 

[Harry25]

Have a look at this previous post

http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=194304&highlight=Elrim+tab+question

 

[CX54WEK]

Ours did the same thing (2003 S23) last year. On of the rams was working, i.e moving up and down but the LEDS on the dash for the port side ram where not working at all. We left it until the boat was lifted this year to fix. We had a go at fixing it, which resulted in the OH getting stuck in the engine bay, and traced it to a broken wire after changing a ram and indicator panel. At this stage we had decided to leave it alone, however the engineers fixed it for us (for reasons unknown just yet). They changed the ram and the wiring and the problem has been fixed. All in all it was a couple of hours labour to do the wiring and the ram and £160 for the ram. So not too expensive a fix.

The trim tab rams have little rubber bellows that need changing every few years otherwise they let water in. This was the reason ours had broken. The bellows had not been changed, had leaked and then water had entered the ram and knackered the wiring. We have the old ram as evidence. Its a good job the marina staff fixed it for us as we dont think the old ram would have lasted much longer meaning we would have had to lift her again.