martynwhiteley
Active member
Following the last Ouse trip’s fuel starvation problems leaving us out of control on a 5 knot tide, crashing through tree branches until we mobilised the anchor, I was hoping for a more routine run this time, en-route to winter moorings at York. ‘Wishful Thinking’ never a name more appropriate!
Fortunately I’d brought the trip a day forward to get the best of the weather, and the Humber was flat calm. After leaving Ferriby, we’d just safely passed Reads Island, Planing nicely at 90% revs/18 knots (which encouraged me ‘cos both tanks were full and four crew), when the boat fell into a hole and we all fell forwards!
Not the fuel problem again I thought, ‘this boat must not like going to York’, since it had never missed a beat on any other trip. However I soon noticed that the engine was still ticking over sweet as ever at 800 rpm! The obvious checks soon pointed to a throttle cable problem, and closer investigation revealed that the linkage arm on the engine had ‘snapped’.
The new Mercruisers look lovely when they arrive in all shiny black powder coatings, but it doesn’t help when your trying to see how to mend a small part in a dull engine room. Flat seas were the big bonus, and how relieved I was this didn’t happen during our previous Spurn trip in very lively conditions.
When I eventually managed to remove both halves of the missing link, I realised the problem…. The factory fit had only screwed them together by no more that 2 threads, and the inevitable eventually happened. After scraping enough of the black stuff off, I re-attached the linkage with a good half dozen more threads to hold it firm.
It did cross my mind at the time that shortening the linkage slightly would prob increase the idle speed, but I was just glad to be running again, and the journey continued without incident all the way to Naburn Lock.
Did a confident 180 in the weir pool to come and moor alongside the pontoon, tried to engage reverse as we came alongside and couldn’t! Fortunately I was at a shallow enough angle and slow enough for my son to jump ashore and fend off the potential collision. I then realised that the engine was idleing as high as 1500 and this would cause the difficulty engaging gear. What I hadn’t appreciated during that incident was that the problem wasn’t only engaging gear, but also that it wouldn’t disengage at those revs, despite the position of the control!
When the lock opened I gingerly entered, and pulled the lever back to ‘neutral’ once nicely inside, expecting to be able to glide to a halt. The keeper thought I was barmy when I suddenly cut the engine, but I’d soon realised that we were still going far too fast in ‘neutral’, and my quick thinking in shutting down and then restarting in reverse stopped us hitting the gates at a fair lick!
I was in desperate need of a pint of TT by then, so the next stop was The Ship at Acaster, where we glided in silently, having cut the engine well in advance this time! After the refreshments, I adjusted the cable to return idle speed to 800 rpm, and all was well. However it is a bit naughty of Mercruiser to only use 2 threads to join their linkages, don’t you think?
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Fortunately I’d brought the trip a day forward to get the best of the weather, and the Humber was flat calm. After leaving Ferriby, we’d just safely passed Reads Island, Planing nicely at 90% revs/18 knots (which encouraged me ‘cos both tanks were full and four crew), when the boat fell into a hole and we all fell forwards!
Not the fuel problem again I thought, ‘this boat must not like going to York’, since it had never missed a beat on any other trip. However I soon noticed that the engine was still ticking over sweet as ever at 800 rpm! The obvious checks soon pointed to a throttle cable problem, and closer investigation revealed that the linkage arm on the engine had ‘snapped’.
The new Mercruisers look lovely when they arrive in all shiny black powder coatings, but it doesn’t help when your trying to see how to mend a small part in a dull engine room. Flat seas were the big bonus, and how relieved I was this didn’t happen during our previous Spurn trip in very lively conditions.
When I eventually managed to remove both halves of the missing link, I realised the problem…. The factory fit had only screwed them together by no more that 2 threads, and the inevitable eventually happened. After scraping enough of the black stuff off, I re-attached the linkage with a good half dozen more threads to hold it firm.
It did cross my mind at the time that shortening the linkage slightly would prob increase the idle speed, but I was just glad to be running again, and the journey continued without incident all the way to Naburn Lock.
Did a confident 180 in the weir pool to come and moor alongside the pontoon, tried to engage reverse as we came alongside and couldn’t! Fortunately I was at a shallow enough angle and slow enough for my son to jump ashore and fend off the potential collision. I then realised that the engine was idleing as high as 1500 and this would cause the difficulty engaging gear. What I hadn’t appreciated during that incident was that the problem wasn’t only engaging gear, but also that it wouldn’t disengage at those revs, despite the position of the control!
When the lock opened I gingerly entered, and pulled the lever back to ‘neutral’ once nicely inside, expecting to be able to glide to a halt. The keeper thought I was barmy when I suddenly cut the engine, but I’d soon realised that we were still going far too fast in ‘neutral’, and my quick thinking in shutting down and then restarting in reverse stopped us hitting the gates at a fair lick!
I was in desperate need of a pint of TT by then, so the next stop was The Ship at Acaster, where we glided in silently, having cut the engine well in advance this time! After the refreshments, I adjusted the cable to return idle speed to 800 rpm, and all was well. However it is a bit naughty of Mercruiser to only use 2 threads to join their linkages, don’t you think?
<hr width=100% size=1><font color=blue> <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.mboat.org>http://www.mboat.org</A></font color=blue>
