Broke bell housing (TRS)

[flying tomato]

Just wondering if this has happened to anyone else.

I was putting my boat on the trailer after a great day of boating with frineds. I hit the up button for the tilt/trim like I have done a hundred times. The outdrive came up and POW! (heard a very loud pop--I immediately new it was not good) After pulling the boat out of the water and doing a quick inspection, I discovered that the bell housing broke right where the hinge pin goes though it. The boat does not have the limit switch on it, but it should not matter, right????????????

Does anyone know how this might happen???

[Walt. H.]

I'm sorry to hear that happened to you.
You mean the Gimbal housing if so i've seen that happen a few times but mostly when the pivot area was badly eroded from electrolysis another time striking something submerged and that area was also eroded badly.
Another time when a shop dropped a boat while hoisting it with a fork lift from its old trailer onto a new one the customer bought from them and they dropped the boat too fast and of course the drive hit the ground before the hull touch the trailer because the drv was in the down position :bonk: and they broke both pivot ears off and part of the lower skag on a Alpha-1 Gen ll drive.
It wasn't me operating the Fk.lift or my boat fortunately I was just getting out of my truck at this place to buy something and heard the crunch.

[mrfixxall]

like walt said, it could have been preexisting condition from the hurricane or was in,or the pivot pin seized and snapped it off..

[fogducker III]

I had the same thing happen on my Alpha drive, having said that, I had swapped out the original pooched Alpha lower and replaced it with a Gen II. Had to change the shift linkage and grind a little off the inside of the lower plates of the gimbal ring but it worked well. The ONLY problem was the top of the gear housing on the Gen II is slightly higher than the original Alpha so one day when I trimmed it up to trailer it, I had no trailering "trim" so just trimmed up with throttle/shift trim switch and the top of the gear housing pryed against the top of the gimbal bell housing and snapped the gimbal ring in half at the pivot pins!!!:eek:


From the sounds of it, this is what happened to yours, not the same reason obviously, but it does sound like it just trimmed up to high and forced itself against the gimbal bell housing...:confused:

[Conquistador_del_mar]

Just wondering if this has happened to anyone else.

I was putting my boat on the trailer after a great day of boating with frineds. I hit the up button for the tilt/trim like I have done a hundred times. The outdrive came up and POW! (heard a very loud pop--I immediately new it was not good) After pulling the boat out of the water and doing a quick inspection, I discovered that the bell housing broke right where the hinge pin goes though it. The boat does not have the limit switch on it, but it should not matter, right????????????

Does anyone know how this might happen???

I am almost certain that there are two different length rams that have been used on TRS drives. Is there any chance that you changed out rams or have the longer ones than your setup calls for? Bill

[Walt. H.]

What Fogducker said, but I would think that the bypass valve should have still kicked in anyway when it hits a stop or resistance of anykind and you hear the pump change in sound and thats when you release the trim switch.
The trim limit switch is only used just so you're not over trimming the drive "u" joint at speed, but when you're raising the drive for trailering there isn't a electrical stop tilt switch, just us releasing the switch when we hear the pump motor speed increase because that resistance the oil is now being bypassed allowing the trim pump to speed up.
So if your gimbal pivot assy wasn't in frail condition maybe the hyd bypass valve didn't bypass and kept applying pressure after you ran out of travel?