242 Limited - E-Series - Drive Control - Check Engine Message

[WTScott]

Hey Guys,

Interesting incident on my 242. Had been out for a "long" run on Lake Livingston - A couple of hours down and around the lake and went to lunch at Indian Point. As I put the boat in reverse, the starboard engine produced a "Drive Control - Check Engine Warning" and upon leaving would not throttle up over idle. I did the control / alt / delete and shut down engines / cut batteries off and back on and everything came up fine and engines both went to full power. Everything was fine until reaching our dock and hitting reverse again and same warning on starboard engine came up.

Did some troubleshooting and it was clear that the starboard bucket was not going into the full reverse position. A little bit of googling turned up a post on the other site about this warning and checking for obstructions, binding etc in the gates. I have Cobras and fangs so was worried about something being loose or installed wrong. Could not find any problems on the dock so pulled the boat out to run into the shop. While we had it in the driveway I was looking for any other problems and my wife notices that the fins are at different levels.

Long story short, we had hit something and bent up the starboard fin. The aluminum mounting bracket "gave" about 2 inches (probably as designed). The bend up canted it in and the mounting screw was just in the way of the gate hence the warning. I did a temporary fix with the big channel locks and will order a new mounting bracket from Jeff on Monday. Dropped it back in the water and everything back to normal - yeah.

Good lesson - I was looking for something complicated, technical and assuming an ECM fault and the solution was the most obvious - really hard for an engineer to get to that point! Sorry I messed up and did not get before and after pictures- I know, it did not happen.

 

[Julian]

Good to know....not sure I would have thought an obstruction would cause this issue....especially if it worked after a reset...that is strange.

Next time, if you are on the water, and the boat isn't working....you can use our AT Help function - it will alert members who are subscribed to help out and you will likely get assistance quickly.

Glad you figured it out. @Cobra Jet Steering LLC is very helpful when it comes to damaged parts....I'm sure he'll get you back in working order quickly!

 

[Cobra Jet Steering LLC]

Yes the brackets are so0ft aluminum and will give if you strike something you can pull the fin back down with no ill effect "NUMEROUS TIMES if it happens again , my suggestion is to reverse the small button cap bolt that attaches the fin to the bracket, what happened is the nylok nut is catching on the ribs of the reverse gate so if you reverse these two small bolts and place the nylock nut on the outside even if you do strike something again the button cap end will not catch the reverse bucket . Be careful about the wife because she obviously has a talent for noticing small inconsistencies. LOL

 

[WTScott]

@Julian - to clarify, I was already out in the water and the throttle was in neutral to start the engines. The gate could get to that position so it did not detect a fault. I went into forward to go back to the cabin and did not hit reverse until I was docking - that is when it hit the screw and triggered the fault. Also, evidently there is an override behind the console to allow you to limp home.

In the fault mode, the starboard engine would not go past idle although the port engine worked normally. The starboard engine would operate in no wake mode so I could throttle it up slightly to limp along. With the starboard at full no wake mode speed the port engine could maintain a pretty good clip. I assumed that running this way for a short period of time to limp back should not be a problem.

Thanks for the info on the emergency response.

 

[WTScott]

@Cobra Jet Steering LLC - definite problem on noticing small inconsistencies!

Thanks for the info - I thought about doing the reversal and will do that the next time I am out of the water. Glad to hear that the temporary fix will work longer term.

Best / Scott