Optimax tilt limiter?

[martini]

I've just connected a battery to my Opti's for the first time and operated the trim/tilt. All seems to work fine on both engines except they don't seem to tilt fully up.

Somethings stopping them dead in their tracks in the same way as they normally do at full tilt. You can see by the length of ram showing compared to the cylinder length they're probably not even getting half way up. Got no chance of swinging the safety catch up.

Had a good look round and checked the usual stuff, steerings not fouling etc, can't see anything that might stop them going all the way up. Does the same when you tilt the motors manually too so I don't think it's a hydraulic issue. Unlikely theres a fault at all if the motors are both doing the same.

Anyone got any ideas??

The only theory I can come up with is maybe someone fitted some sort of packer inside the tilt cylinder to prevent it from travelling to far. Maybe they were fitted to a boat with transom jacks or a small outboard well so they limited the travel to prevent damage?

Probably clutching at straws there but its got me puzzled! Can't find any mention of anything like that in the workshop manual.

[Nos4r2]

How much oomph does the battery have? It may not have enough to run the motors at tilt speed.
<edit> Ok, I should read the post properly...won't manual tilt either.

[Chris]

Don't know about Mercs but there is a collar on the etec that you can twist to set the maximum tilt.

[martini]

Spoke to a Merc tech today, apparantly the standard way to limit tilt on Mercs except for the newest models is to sleeve the ram. If you order a tilt limiting kit from mercury, they send you a piece of tube which you cut to the desired length. Simple but effective I suppose! Means I've got to strip down my tilt cylinders now though