242LS nozzle deflector snapped off

[sysinu]

(sorry for the double post on FB and here)... Figured the information should be shared in multiple locations once I find out the cause.

So... Made it out on the lake today. Started playing around on the water and my port throttle decided to start freaking out. So I kill it and have a look in the 50 degree water. The deflector nozzle came lose from the pump (bottom bolt broke the head off and the top bolt is in place). The cast aluminum of the deflector nozzle on the top bolt slot broke (bolt was fine and in tact).

Now for the big issue. When this happened I was going 40MPH and my fins decided that the nozzle needed to spin so my reverse gate cable snapped. I had to get in the water and try to take off the steering linkage so I could pull the nozzle fins and reverse gate off and come to find that the fin springs were in the way.

I was able to tie the nozzle and fins to the ladder in such a way that it stopped spinning us in circles and make it back in.

What on earth could have caused this!!?!? We didn't hit anything.


...

I was in a turn when I got the throttle control feedback. I am not really sure if I had my TV XL's locked down or not since they automatically flip up, but I can't imagine they were down as I went into the turn shortly after coming off a plane (but still going at a pretty good rate).

I dropped her off at the dealer on the way home from the lake (since I have a trip coming up really soon and am traveling a bit).

Since I have another broken nozzle (had a seized bolt strip off taking my cobra's and putting on my TVXL's so it was just laying around waiting to get re-tapped), I took a picture of it and illustrated where the break was. The piece that broke off was nowhere to be found.

 

[sysinu]

Bruce added a comment on FB:
Could you post pictures? It is hard to imagine this happening without hitting anything. Were you in a turn? Do your fins lock down?

 

[buckbuck]

I can't think of anything that would cause that except a bad casting.

 

[sysinu]

I was thinking along the same lines. The only other thing I could hypothesize would be if somehow the bottom (threaded with loktite) bolt may have come loose and worked its way out in two very short outings (like 45 minutes in the water each time) and then I put pressure on the top connection (though I would have expected the bolt to shear off before an aluminum cast would break) when I went into the turn.

 

[Skysurfer2010]

I hope you took your TVs off before dropping it off at the dealer. I wouldn't want to give them any excuse to try and place blame on anything other than a manufacturing defect.

 

[sysinu]

I didn't. We will see what they say . I could see the circustances of me taking off Cobras which have a plate that threads in through that bottom hole and maybe I am supposed to use epoxy instead of loktite red to put the bottom bolt back in. End of the day I just want root cause so I know how to prevent it in the future. It's not the fins that caused the problem. There was some type of double failure.

 

[sysinu]

That said. I hope they don't say it was just the fins. That would be sucky and a misrepresentation of the issue since so many people have fins.

 

[Skysurfer2010]

I 100% agree with you. I just hope you have a good dealer that doesn't try to place blame to get out of warranty work.