Well, I was planning to go for a ride on the river today until I attempt to trim the motor up to put the motor-toter on and all I heard was the "click" from the solenoid. That put a few choice words in my mouth and started the process of elimination to find out the problem. Solenoid checked out OK. Then the bad news starts to wander in the head. $300 plus for a new trim motor. Wonderful.
That's when I remembered that about 6 or 8 years ago I had performed a little life saving procedure on a friends '82 model Evinrude trim motor. So, my next steps were as follows. Keep this in mind if your trim ever fails. It's worth the time to try. It has now worked twice for me.
Remove the motor from the trim unit and if you can remove the winding shaft, do so carefully. The brushes are spring loaded and will shoot the brushes out of their slide boxes. Quite a pain in the butt to put them back in under spring pressure, hold them back and try to insert the winding shaft when you're done cleaning it.
I found that the gasket between the motor and the res. was missing a good amount on the rear side against the transom. That allowed water in the motor and after sitting for 3 weeks it must have become stuck and would not budge when using the trim switch. I took the winding shaft, which had some surface rust on the metal cylinder that turns through the magnets, and placed it in my drill press and used some 400 grit sand paper to knock the rust off and restore the finish. Also, I cleaned the magnets where this shaft spins. After everything, I put it back together and it works like new.
Before you make the call that your PTT motor is DOA, do the above and see what happens.
Merry Christmas, evryone.
