twin rams are too long

[GeneinOregon]

This is going to sound a little silly because the obvious was overlooked. Whenever our boat was out of the water we had the outdrive up. When it go launched the drive was lowered to the stops. I have not been able to get the boat to plane or even function well after about 2,000 RPM's. Yesterday I needed to lower the outdrive to make sure no water was collected in the bottom housing if the temperatures got too low. What I found out was that the unit wouldn't go down to the stops. I disconnected the rams and discovered that the rams are now 2 3/8" too long. These are the original rams that were on the 76 SeaRay with a 305 Ford engine. I am going to take them to the shop and have the ends cut off and rethread it but I don't understand what happened to cause this. Did I get the wrong outdrive? It is the 116.

[Tech Support]

Are you sure you have our SE116 drive? The SE116 will not fit onto an original 1976 transom assembly without considerable modifications.
The trim cylinders have the stop built into them when lowering the drive. If you remove the trim cylinders the drive will drop further down.
If you do have our SE116 drive you could replace the trim cylinders with the ones designed for it.

Tech Support

[GeneinOregon]

Sorry about that, it has to be the 106. I didn't modify anything when I installed it and it works great. I can fix the problem by cutting 2 1/2 inches off the ram shaft and rethreading it. I just wondered why it happened. I pushed the ram shaft into the cylinder a couple time to make sure they were hitting the internal stops.

[Tech Support]

If you have the stock trim cylinders for your 1976 boat there should be about
4 3/4" from the cap on the body to the center of the piston eyelet when retracted.

Tech Support

[GeneinOregon]

Well, I did the measure thing and it looked ok except that the stop in the cylinder didn't look right. I took it apart and found the brass bearing frozen on the pivot arm shaft. I was able to free it but it kept freezing on the shaft. I now have two new ones that don't freeze. Thanks for you effort. I guess I should have made sure the outdrive was all the way down each time I parked it. I will from now on.