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Honda BF50A tilt dropping slowly

seanymph1

New member
Hi
My tilt motor has plenty of power and raises the engine to the top easily, but the engine slowly drops back down again over a period of 10 seconds. I would appreciate any ideas on what is causing this to drop? Thanks
 
Near the bottom of the tilt cylinder/pump assembly, is a screw whose purpose is to allow the engine to be tilted up or down in an emergency. It's usually accessible from the LH side, and it should be snug for the tilt to work properly.

If that's already tight, the tilt/trim reservoir is full, and there's no big oily mess in the neighbor hood of the pump, I don't know what's wrong, as it's pretty unusual for these to fail internally....
 
Thank you for the reply Alan, much appreciated. The screw that you mention is in pretty bad shape where the previous owner has used the wrong tool to tighten it.
Is it straight forward enough to remove the screw , clean and replace with a new one or am I opening a can of worms. Is there likely to be a spring and ball popping out if I remove the screw.
I wish a drawing was available, that would help.
 
You need to be pretty careful removing the screw if that's the route you want to take. I've "restored" several of these to usable condition after they've been torn up or just badly corroded. I use a dremel tool to carefully increase the depth of the slot - while leaving the screw in place.

I've had the screws out. As I remember there was no spring loaded ball, just a couple of small metal (?) disks that the screw pushes on to seal a hole. If there's no pressure on the hydraulics, I would think they would stay in place. Your luck may be different, so proceed with extreme care. I'm sure you've seen that stuff just isn't available. -Al
 
This is the same drawing for a 99 motor. Note that there is no part number for part shown as #23
https://www.boats.net/catalog/honda...3000001-to-bazl-3099999/power-tilt-components

This leaves the question begging whether or not the parts for the 2001 motor can be substituted for those on a 99. I hope I never need to find out!

Another thought -
If you pull that screw, you would want to be sure all of those parts were standing up prior to reinstalling the screw. If they had fallen over and were laying flat, and you tightened the screw on them, safe bet they'll be destroyed....
 
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