Are You Damaging Your Gearbox when Changing Gear?
Clutch Canine Gearboxes
Outboard motors and most stern drive gearboxes (like Mercruiser’s Alpha drives) use a Canine Clutch set up for choosing and shifting gear.
If you choose gear slowly and caretotally with these gearboxes you will actually be damaging the gear box.
Do you hear a grinding or chattering noise when selecting either forward or reverse gear?
If you do, something needs to vary or at some point your decrease unit will not have any drive and it will continuously leap out of gear.
Firstly I will clarify how the decrease unit/gearbox works.
They have an enter shaft that is pushed from the engine or ‘power head’. (This input shaft is called the driveshaft. The driveshaft has a gear linked to the underside of it called the Pinion gear. The pinion gear is always in fixed mesh with the forward and reverse gears. When ever the motor is running, the pinion gear is rotating the forward and reverse gears. Between the forward and reverse gear there’s the mechanism that selects gear. This is called the Clutch Dog.
The Clutch Canine sits on the propeller shaft that protrudes out the back of the gearbox and drives the propeller. The Clutch Dog has an internal spline that is in fixed mesh with the propeller shaft.
Image the Clutch Canine having a front and a back. At each finish it has large, square teeth. When you select gear on the motor you move the Clutch Canine forwards and backwards alongside the propeller shaft.
When the Clutch Canine is moved to pick gear it engages with the same sized sq. tooth on the particular gear that’s being engaged.
Do not forget that each of the output gears (forward and reverse) are rotating as they’re in constant mesh with the pinion gear (enter gear).
If you select gear slowly, the Clutch Canine will slowly move into mesh with the gear. This sluggish movement causes the enamel of the gear to ‘skip’ over the tooth on the Clutch Dog. This continuous skipping wears away the good sharp edges of the teeth and will ultimately cause the motor to jump out of gear.
Easy methods to Choose Gear
· The way to avoid doing damage to your gearbox is to positively choose gear. This means to literally bang the engine into gear so that you hear one clean engagement of the gearbox, not chatter.
· You should also pause in neutral when shifting from forwards to reverse or vice versa. This allows the propeller time to stop spinning.
· Do not shift into reverse if you end up moving forwards quickly. It creates a huge amount of pointless force on the gearbox (and engine). Slow the boat down of the plane, come back to an idle and pause in neutral to let the boat slow proper down. Reverse is purely a reverse, not a break…
Engine Idle Speed Too High
· One other cause for damage being completed to the Clutch Dog is your idle speed may be too high. In case you motor is idling higher than round 900rpm in impartial you will be doing damage every time you are deciding on gear.
So…
· Make certain your idle speed is set to what the Producer recommends!
· Positively choose gear
· Pause in impartial between gear changes.
· Let the boat gradual down before turning into reverse
· Have the gear oil modified each 100 hours or yearly, which ever comes first.
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