tilt / trim.. whats the diffrence?

[boaterntexas]

I was just wondering what the diffrence is between tilt and trim. my morse controls have seperate switch for tilt which will only work when going down, and another switch for trim, which goes both up and down.. any Idea whats going on?

 

[dragracer]

Re: tilt / trim.. whats the diffrence?

I'm no expert but as far as know the term tilt is used for a system that will only tilt the engine up/down when the boat is stopped or moving very slowly. The term trim is used to describe the feature that lets you trim up your engine(or outdrive) while you are cruising. Just makes the boat/motor work more efficietly by getting on plain quicker with motor trimmed down and then getting more of the bow out of the water(for higher top speeds) when trimmed up. <br /><br />I believe that the more powerful "TRIM" function only works up to a certain amount of the total "tilt" of the engine/lower unit. So a combination of tilt/trim is normal on most boats.

 

[arks]

Re: tilt / trim.. whats the diffrence?

DragRacer's pretty much got it. <br />It's really the same function, with the "trim" rotating the drive from the lowest setting only up to maybe 10 or 15% of the total pivot, and the "tilt" which rotates it all the way up for trailering. The seperate switches are only there to confuse you <br /><br />My Mercruiser trim switch is in the throttle handle, while the tilt button is on the dash. They BOTH operate up and down, so you might have a bad limit switch or wire on your tilt.

 

[Boatin Bob]

Re: tilt / trim.. whats the diffrence?

I see you have an old 76 115Merc, I used to have a 76 Merc150, I don't know about the Morse controls but I had original Merc controls and there was a separate panel with 3 buttons for the tilt/trim, there is also a trim limit switch in the transom bracket, you could only trim the engine up as far as the switch would let you then to go beyond that point you had to push in the 2nd button (at the same time)on the panel which over rode the limit switch at the transom, in other words you really had to work at tilting the motor all the way up. It was designed this way to prevent raising it too much by accident. The 3rd button lowered the drive.