Friday, January 11, 2013

Check Those Morse Controls Guys (Safety Warning)

Yesterday was a  maintenance day, I decided to replace the shift and throttle cables,as they were just a little bit stiff.




Its a pretty straightforward job, remove the control disconnect the cables from both ends and replace with new cables.


What I didn't anticipate was the wear on the brass trunnions that attaches the cable to the control.
They had both worn badly but as you can see from the pic the gearbox one had nearly worn through completely! Oh and I bite my nails!
 


The local chandlery in Stone had a couple of new ones, as you can see the old one wasn't hanging on by much.


If a cable does snap or the trunnion wear right through it generally is just an inconvenience, but if it snaps whilst approaching a lock or jetty and you are in forward gear, as you go into reverse and increase the revs all that happens is that you go faster forward as the gearbox is still in reverse, your instinct tells you that you are not giving enough revs so you give it more, result being you go even faster forward until you hit something to stop you!xIt could also happen in reverse, or if the throttle cable snaps you will have no throttle control.

Our boat is 4 years old and just clocked up around 3500 hours.

Maybe worth checking your Morse controls guys.





2 comments:

  1. Only 50 hours on the engine and we haven't even left the boatyard but I've already enquired about purchasing a set of spare control cables.

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  2. this is what winters are for... Narrowboat Maintenance!

    ReplyDelete