Trim tab issues

[CX54WEK]

Left the boat for the week all was fine. Went back to the boat and the port trim tab has buggered up. They are Eltrim with an LED indicator panel. The port side is fully down with the LEDS all the way to the bottom. The motors appear to be working and the starboard side works fine. We have stuck the boat hook on top of the tabs and both are moving. However when the boat gets up onto the plane it heels over so something is clearly amiss. Any ideas?

 

[AdeOlly]

So the port tab keeps going fully down? Sounds like a short circuit somewhere. You may have an unbroken cable all the way from the control panel to the tab motor, or as with my boat you may have a terminal block on the inside of the transom. If the latter that'd be the first place to check for a short. If not, then check behind the control panel in case you've got a leak/condensation. If the terminals are all clean you've most likely got a short in the motor unit itself, which is bad news I'm afraid. There was another thread about these tabs a little while back clicky here

 

[CX54WEK]

The tab will stay in the position you put it in, but even fully up the indicator panel is saying it is fully down. The motors are still working. It is as though one of the tabs is much lower than the other. They both work in that they are moving up and down but the port side indicator says it is fully down.

 

[halcyon]

The indicator is driven by a pot in the leg motor. This has a pos and neg feed and a wiper output to drive the display. You get up or down depending which end of the pot the wiper is, i.e. more postive or negative.

If you have a bad connection on one of the pos or neg connections you will get a full scale reading, and it will not move a lot with the leg moving up or down.

Check wires 4 and 5, for ground and 12 volt.

Brian

 

[CX54WEK]

Thanks. Will have a look this weekend

 

[Scubadoo]

I agree with Halcyon, earlier this year I found one of the terminal blocks with most of the screw heads and wires badly corroded. So replaced the terminal block and placed it in a waterproof box. It was a pig of a job to do behind the engine and with limited length of wires, all the wires are number (mine were).

What gets me is Sealine fitted this way with out any protection or marine grade materials.

If they look okay but the terminal blocks are not protected I would at least put some electrical tape round it.

 

[robyonfrome]

My starboard trim tab packed in last year, since then I have been using the leg trim on both legs to balance the boat and it seams to do the job, so much so I don’t know whether its worth the £400/500 replacing them.