Reverse Gear Adjustment

[Aj@yknot]

Greetings all.
My boat was a bit awkward to pull out of the slip (since *I* laid hands on it at least) and the previous owner notes that the port prop walk was always substantial, however the last two or three times I've needed reverse it has been horribly lacking and when I did get any affect out of it, it was to rotate the boat on centre.
I've read several threads on the board about adjusting reverse nut, and from all I've read this is what I need to do. I've managed to get access to the transmission and I've managed to tighten the reversing nut by two faces (clockwise as if facing the tranny *through* the nut).
Umm.
With my fingers. i.e. there was NO tension on the nut at all.

a) is it *normal* for there to be very little tension on the nut, and or resistance to the tightening?
and also
b) what purpose is served by the holes in the faces of the nut? Should there be a (several) cotter pins inserted here?

Additonal info:
a) binnacle mounted shifter and throttle.
b) A4 was rebuilt about 3 years ago.
c) Newport C&C 28, it is *tight* in the engine compartment. Such that I don't think I've been able to see the adjusting screw for forward in the box.

[JOHN COOKSON]

Yes, prop walk in reverse does happen. Especially if the boat is not moving when you shift into reverse.
If the boat is moving backwards when you shift into reverse the prop walk will be lessened.
Try having a crew member push the boat back then hop on when you shift into reverse. This should help.

TRUE GRIT

[alcodiesel]

There should be a spring tension thingy on the rev. adj. nut. The one on my boat broke and it was impossible to keep the nut from loosening on its own. Not too hard to replace.

[ndutton]

Spring tension thingy

[Aj@yknot]

Thanks for the note about the spring tensioner. I may end up standing on my head to see if this is my issue since I'm coming at this from the starboard side and in my case the nut is on port.

I'm guessing if the nut has free wheeled off because the spring is missing/broken/abducted by aliens, my best method to resolve this will be to 'keep trying' till I get it tight enough to do the job. I'm thinking that I can watch the prop shaft (which happily has an alignment stripe painted on it from the rebuild) while tied up, and work with one nut on the case, pivoting the case cover open and closed as I need to adjust, having another body on deck starting/stopping the engine and shifting into forward and reverse until I can see that reverse is properly engaging. (Yes, power off the engine between adjustment attempts. Happily I have a whack of gasket material about as I've just replaced the fuel tank sending unit gasket (that had been leaking furiously when one filled the tank) so I can recut a gasket if needed after adjustments are done.

Does the above sound like a reasonable proposal to resolve my issue?

[ndutton]

Please read the Moyer Marine reversing gear adjustment instructions found on the Home Page→Support→FAQs→Reversing Gear→Item 7

[alcodiesel]

Ya gotta replace the spring.

[Aj@yknot]

Okay folks:

I made it back to the boat.

1) spring (and retaining screw) both present although the screw was a wee bit loose, and the spring was trapped *under* the nut. I backed the nut off a couple of faces, adjusted the spring position and turned the nut 1 face more than a full turn to get it back in the spring's grip. I snugged the screw down while I was there.

2) forward detent is just a hint tighter than it was, but neutral range is still sufficient to easily get there.

3) reverse is definitely back in a big way - -much more oomph even while tied up at the dock

Question: I've only flipped it in and out of forward and reverse a couple of times and *only* in idle, after tightening things up, but from watching the shaft while gears were engaged, is the ratio in reverse slightly lower than the ratio in forward? It seemed to me that there was slightly less turning in reverse.

Popping down off the forward detent resulted in about 5 or 6 rotations of the shaft before it stopped, and backing off reverse let go quickly and seemed to have about 3 or 4 rotations to stop. Shaft turns, with a small effort while in neutral (and engine off, no I'm not going to risk my fingers, I type for a living)


(edit to update)
Okay - figured out that I'd likely overtightened the reverse nut -- in 'neutral' the shaft would intermittently engage for 3 or 4 turns in reverse while standing at the dock - it didn't pull the boat backward but it pushed me into the finger consistently (port side slip and the prop walk) -- I ended up backing it off 3 faces -- so I'm guessing that it slipped out of the spring for *some* reason recently and backed off 3 faces on its own?

I've also learned that to get out of the slip I have to put it in reverse, wait about 3 seconds, rev it up to about 30% throttle, and ONLY then can I cast off or the boat just corkscrews into neighbour, which I just don't want to do.

[Marian Claire]

"Question: I've only flipped it in and out of forward and reverse a couple of times and *only* in idle, after tightening things up, but from watching the shaft while gears were engaged, is the ratio in reverse slightly lower than the ratio in forward? It seemed to me that there was slightly less turning in reverse."

Yes. I think it is 1.3 to 1.
Dan
S/V Marian Claire