Carver Owners Forum

Coming back from Nashville to Iowa, I made if to chester Illinois mm 110 limping on one motor. I have lost the starboard transmission. It does not turn in forward or reverse. Shifting cable is intact and operating. I find that it will spin by hand. The working port transmission will not turn by hand. I checked the transmission fluid level and it was gone in bad side. I am assuming I have lost a clutch or worse. I plan on slow boating it to Evansville on the kaskaskia River. Questions. Can the transmission be repaired in the water? Anyone have a lead on a mechanic in the area? Locals have been great but still not finding a boat mechanic. Should I have it pulled out and trailered? If so where to? Thanks!

Since it can spin by hand, any chance it is a key issue?

Otherwise, besides adding fluid, i believe to tear into the transmission, the boat needs to be out of the water. But people much more knowledgeable than me im sure will chime in.
Best of luck,

If you have the 454 Crusaders with Velvetdrive transmission and reduction gears, then they can be removed from the boat when it's in the water. If you remove the trans and reduction gear as an assembly, they are pretty heavy... around 150 lbs if I recall correctly. When I removed mine, I took the reduction gear off first, then pulled the trans, but the trans by itself was still over 100 lbs.

You need to find out what happened to the trans fluid. Were there any signs of trans fluid in the bilge? If you were leaking at a hose or spurting out the vent you may have pumped the bulk over the side with the bilge pump but there should be plenty of signs there was fluid leaking in there. Otherwise, you might have a trans fluid cooler issue.

If you don't have trans fluid temp alarms then I'd seriously consider it. Low fluid or slipping trans will lead to high temperatures and the alarm will sound before too much damage is done.

I have to confess, I was in a desperate situation and kept moving the boat when I knew I think something was wrong. We were North of Cape Girardeau in high current with no place to pull off. I had lost the other engine to a fuel problem. So I think I definitely overran it and burn up the oil there was no oil in it. If I buy a complete unit will that come with everything I screwed up?

You still want to find out where that oil went. If you burned it up there would have been a LOT of smoke. It's possible there was some slippage going on that heated the fluid and 'boiled' it out of the transmission (a prior owner of one of my boats did that, after he failed to put the fill cap back on properly), so again there should be some signs. If you don't see anything then you probably want to pressure test the transmission fluid cooler and verify it's good before you hook up a new transmission to that.

Since they share oil, you probably messed up the reduction gears too, so you'd probably have to replace the set. If they were rebuilt there might be some salvageable parts inside, but that would cost you time. You need to get the reduction gear numbers and the rotation correct on the replacement. There should be a tag near the shift lever that has all the necessary info. I think my reductions were 2.57:1 but yours may be different.

If you get the transmission and reduction gears as a set, you can just do a remove-and-replace. It's heavy, but it's actually not that hard of a job to do.

The label states rh 454, serial number for crusader. Is that number connected both to engine and the velvetdrive?

The transmission label is farther down and to the left, in that picture (IIRC).

Here's a couple examples of what you're looking for:

I called a Carver dealer to see if they could track my transmission info for the starboard side with the hull number. They can not. I am a bit surprised that a the 3607 would have optional transmissions. I suppose for different gear ratio/performance options? Anyone out there with a 1989 3607 that can tell me the make/model of their transmission? What's the likelihood of it being the same as mine? I may drive the 300 miles back and use the time to pull the transmission and for further eval.

I just took out and had my transmission repaired on my 32" Montego this week.

No one in my area had or would give us the time of day to come and fix it.

So I figured I would just do it myself or the summer would be gone before I could pay
someone to get it done.

Portside... took off velvet drive first and then the tranny, it is heavy in
a bottom of a boat lol. but Im an old guy and had a young guy give me a hand.

We did it while in the water.

You can UPS it to Kalamazoo Marine Transmission if you can't find someone local to do it
(Craig) the owner is a good guy with alot of experience

Steve

Hudsteve wrote:Source of the post I just took out and had my transmission repaired on my 32" Montego this week.

No one in my area had or would give us the time of day to come and fix it.

So I figured I would just do it myself or the summer would be gone before I could pay
someone to get it done.

Portside... took off velvet drive first and then the tranny, it is heavy in
a bottom of a boat lol. but Im an old guy and had a young guy give me a hand.

We did it while in the water.

You can UPS it to Kalamazoo Marine Transmission if you can't find someone local to do it
(Craig) the owner is a good guy with alot of experience

Steve

Minor clarification... I'm thinking you meant "reduction gear" there. The reduction gear and tranny are both part of the Velvetdrive unit. Coincidentally, when I did mine I did the same thing.. remove the reduction gear first to lighten the overall load. Mine was also the port side.

Did you have to support the rear of the engine when you did this? If so, what did you use to do it?

If the gears are not damaged, then rebuilding the transmission is actually not very hard, but you need something like a press to put it back together. I fabricated a press to do it. Just a lot of clutches and seals and put it all back in place in the right order. All the service manuals for these are downloadable too.