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BF225 - Tilt Motor Bogging Down / Quitting

All fixed. New motor works great. All new seals and inner seals. Never lifted so clean!

Only other observation is at first felt like the new Honda style plug from AP didn’t fit but turned out the spade lugs were very close together so needed opening a hair.

Honda left. AP right.

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Also worth a mention that when you dismantle tilt ram to put new cap on - use great care undoing the 24mm nut. springs and tiny bearings in there to look out for.

Black cap is the new one from 5 star marine.


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Six months in and my AP motor is showing some weird rust / brown stains at the base.

OEM motor on port engine photo for comparison.

Weird. I used the old mounting hardware if I recall - so not sure where the stains are coming from …
 

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Looks to me as if they used carbon steel to stamp out the motor housing case. Might just be more of a nuisance for you than anything else. You'll probably need to keep wiping it down as NSDON suggests. I wouldn't worry too much about it as long as it works ok.
There's a reason they are less expensive than Honda.

One thing I do on ALL trim motors is use."sensor safe" sealer/gasket maker like Permatex Right Stuff to seal where the wires enter the case.

I started doing that after finding water ingress at that spot on genuine Honda motor housings that killed several of them in our little fleet.
 
bobmech said:
Maybe the 4 motor casing crush tubes aren't s/steel?
Click to expand...
i bet that is it! i did put a decent amount or pure-silicone caulk on the wire-entry per @jgmo comment at the time i was doing it, so would be surprised if there is egress inside the housing. looking at the rust right under that bolt-head though - the crush tubes would make a ton of sense...
 
Agree with that....probably a good call on BobMech's behalf.

I hope that "silicone" you used didn't smell like vinegar though. That type is death to electrical components.
 
jgmo said:
I hope that "silicone" you used didn't smell like vinegar though. That type is death to electrical components.
Click to expand...
uh oh... did not know that. i used Flex Seal - it's a super bomber roofing caulk that I use on metal roofing. don't recall a vinegar smell - so hopefully it doesn't do damage...
 
Well, I don't know about Flex-Seal but as long as it's not an RTV (Room Temperature Vulcanizing) sealer you should be fine.

The acid used in RTV sealers to hasten the cure time attacks all forms of copper.

I found this out at a Loc-Tite seminar some years ago when they described a huge problem that the U.S. Navy had when they sealed their huge wharf electrical panels with RTV silicone.

The damage was in the $millions$ and, since they had no idea what caused it, they repaired it all and RE-SEALED again with RTV!....MORE $MILLIONS$!

Loc-Tite was using that example to illustrate why RTV silicone use on modern engines with oxygen sensors will destroy the sensors fairly quickly.
 
Update: where there is smoke there is fire. Or rather, where there is rust there is impending doom. ;)

API tilt-motor gave up the ghost today. For the the last week, it's started flaking on me - first started with failing to lift once - with just spinning motor noise - then trim has been delayed for a bit compared to other engine, to the point it just stopped working. I hear the relay click - but motor does not engage at all. I assume the rust is a symptom of water ingress at this point - so will have to pull the boat and investigate and probably go with OEM motor next time. Live and learn...
 
Sorry to hear that.

Dang!.Those Honda trim motors are pricey!

I don't know but you might try seeing if you could save a few $$$ by pricing a new one from yumbo.com

Then, don't forget to seal the wires with sensor safe sealer.

Good luck
 
API says the motor is still under 1-year warranty - but they need to inspect it first in order to issue a replacement. Doesn't do me much good to not have one in hand at the time I'm pulling the old one... gonna source an OEM motor, as I don't trust this won't happen again with the API one and don't want the downtime waiting for them to turn it around.
 
Api motor cracked lower housing on all 4 sides. Bolts were torqued to Honda spec of 4.9NM / 43 inch-pounds.

Comparing with OEM motor only thing I can think of is that API included a fatter diameter oring than OEM one and maybe that impacted things? Or defective?
 
Well, the fatter (how much?) Oring could very well have been a factor. It does look as if the housing was in a bind via the mount flange..I actually thought "over torqued" when I first saw the photo before reading your comment about how you tightened it down.

Either oring was wrongly included by a factory worker...it happens...
...OR it was a change API made to seat THEIR housing.
You have no way of finding out except to ask them really.

If they are going to warranty it for you, they may be interested in getting it back to do a failure analysis.

What a PAIN!

BUT...
...you've handled it well IMO.
 
jgmo said:
Well, the fatter (how much?) Oring could very well have been a factor. It does look as if the housing was in a bind via the mount flange..I actually thought "over torqued" when I first saw the photo before reading your comment about how you tightened it down.

Either oring was wrongly included by a factory worker...it happens...
...OR it was a change API made to seat THEIR housing.
You have no way of finding out except to ask them really.

If they are going to warranty it for you, they may be interested in getting it back to do a failure analysis.

What a PAIN!

BUT...
...you've handled it well IMO.
Click to expand...

a fair amount thicker. i would guess 1.5x - 2x, I had to double-check the Honda part # as it seemed so thin compared to the API one.
 
Yeah, that's quite a bit and might certainly be enough to set up the stress it takes to crack that plastic/nylon house. It would be a shame if that's what it was that caused you all this trouble.
Bummer!
 
If you have not replaced it already, I have an oem used tilt/trim unit available from my 200 hp. Glad to see Chawk and jgmo! I hadn't been here in a while since I bought my suzuki's
 
Skooter said:
If you have not replaced it already, I have an oem used tilt/trim unit available from my 200 hp. Glad to see Chawk and jgmo! I hadn't been here in a while since I bought my suzuki's
Click to expand...
Thanks. Already swapped - was able to salvage a used one from friends dead 225. New API motor sent back for warranty claim … although I don’t think I’d trust it again.
 
Just an update that API deemed the motor faulty and replaced under warranty. The included Oring still looks way too fat to me...
 
brettmarl,

Thanks for updating.

You may very well be right about the oring being "incompatible" with the Honda trim unit.

I'm sure those API motors are intended for other trim units and they might not have gotten the Honda fitment "perfect" in this particular case.

Sorry you had to go through all that but hope you're OK with where you ended up.

Happy boating going forward.
 
Similar issue on my 225 with trim motor "running" but nothing moving. Checked fluids etc everything looks OK but haven't started taking things apart yet. My boat lives in the water and only comes out normally once a year - curious how much of what you did would be possible to address with the boat in the water? The assemblies look like they're accessible above the water line but really just starting to look into the problem and haven't started trying to take anything apart yet.
 
I couldn’t imagine doing it on water. Certainly not servicing the tilt rams. Maybe swapping the motor - bit even that sounds risky. Would have to be on some kind of floating platform and then the risk of dropping stuff into the drink seems high.

You can fish the motor and tilt sensor cables fairly easily without taking the upper cowl side off - so that helps….

If motor is down and need to lift and lock it before working on motor - I was not able to get mine lifted on the water and even off the water was a bear with no hydraulic help.

Double check the obvious that your manual release valve hasn’t come open …

Good luck!
 
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