Carver Owners Forum

Help! My wife and I just recently purchased a 2000 Carver 45 voyager with twin 480 Penta Volvos. I had the boat out and was experiencing a delay in the forward engagement of the port Trans, approximately 12-15 seconds. After a short while, while returning to dock. I lost all forward power in that Trans. Reverse still works fine. I would like to trouble shoot this issue before calling a mechanic. Any suggestions. Thank you in advance.

DM; Afraid your issue may be an internal problem and the transmission is going to have to be pulled and rebuilt. Do not think its going to be an in boat repair. You may be able to locate a rebuilt one and do a swap out to shorten your down time. Or send yours out to be rebuilt, but in the peak of the season, down time could be weeks to months! IMO.

Sounds similar to a problem I had year before last. In my case the clutches fused but fortunately in my case it was in forward. I was able to make it home but the port transmission required a rebuild. Obviously it will have to be looked at. It could be something simple but most likely a rebuild will be needed.

Welcome to the forum.....the one easy thing for you would be to check the trans fluid levels in both trans( port and stbd ) and compare the look and smell of the fluid in the good one against the troubled one....there should be instructions for that in your manual.........hopefully and I say hopefully it will just be fluid level.

I would definitely check the linkage and make sure that the valve is getting fully moved to "fwd" and "rev" before I did anything else (except, maybe, checking the fluid levels). Could be something as easy as the linkage having some loose connections and getting sloppy and not making it all the way into forward gear.

Welcome aboard David.

I agree with all the above. I don't recall what was used in that vintage but it could also be an electrical and or valving issue. A lot of transmission manufacturers have been using electric trolling shift valves for some time. This can be checked without removing the transmission. Check the simple things noted above first, and if yours incorporates electric valves, don't let anyone tell you it's an internal issue unless they check valve operation first or it'll be a very expensive oversight. Keep us posted.

PS; Does your boat have a trolling option, and if so, is it off/dissengaged?

Info off the transmission would help, like make, model, serial number. There may also be a label on the engine that has Volvo numbers for the transmission.

David, did you get anywhere with this?