Did my friend damage my boat?

Knot It

Knot It

Member
Oct 28, 2011
374
St. Louis, Mo
Boat Info
'01 340 Sundancer
Engines
T-7.4 Horizons w/ V Drives
Last weekend while cruising at about 2100 rpm my friend reached up to snap the eisenglass and as he reached up his t-shirt draped over the starboard shifter. When he went to sit down he accidently pulled the shifter with him as it was under his shirt tail. Before I could react he pushed the shifter back up into gear. There was a loud thud and you could feel the boat shake just a bit. I immediately pulled back to idle and put both engines into neutral. Then shifted into forward and reverse several times and it felt smooth and sounded normal each time. Ran the rest of our 8 mile trip at about 2000 rpms and backed her into our slip with no issues at all. I checked the transmission and coupler visually and everything looked normal. I have been worried to death since then and am heading back to the boat tomorrow. Should I be concerned and if so what do I need to look for. Engines are 454 horizon trannys are zf hurth 63.

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Yeah that's not good. Time will tell. It you start getting any vibration that could be bad. I remember someone else had this happen and needed a new trans.
 
My brother did that to my boat thinking he was syncing the throttles. It was out of gear for barely a second, but that was about 13 years and 700 hours ago. (also Hurth 630's)
 
The transmission shifter was in forward his T-shirt pulled it into neutral then he pushed it back into forward. It all happened in about half a second. The only time the transmission went into reverse was when I was checking the gears it went fully into reverse and forward fine and then when I backed into the slip it did it fine with no issues

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RollerCoastr said:
Out of curiosity, is your boat really happy at 2,000 RPMs?
Click to expand...

I have small blocks in my boat and 2,000 rpm's is about the limit before I start to 'plow'......we usually cocktail cruise at 1600-1800 rpms which gives us a speed of around 9 mph......

cliff
 
We were at cocktail speed heading up river against a 10 mph current

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I had something similar happen on my boat. That was 400 plus hours and 9 years ago. Not ideal. But it is what it is.
 
skolbe said:
I had something similar happen on my boat. That was 400 plus hours and 9 years ago. Not ideal. But it is what it is.
Click to expand...
If yo are still in Grafton..i was leaving the oyster bar and got caught in that storm when this happened

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Twin 350 mags ZF 630s.......both to neutral and quickly back to forward last year......don't ask........fine so far.
 
I was teaching a friend of mine about the joys of twin engines and maneuverability. We were up on the plane headed home and he asked what happens if I put the transmission in neutral now? He reached for the shifter as I screamed "NOoooooo". Fortunately he stopped what he was doing and I calmed down enough not to call him bad names... but he doesn't drive my boat anymore.
 
My kid accidentally did the same thing to me at cruise speed in my 370. Never had any issues following that but it sure sounded terrible when it happened. The Hurth Trannies are pretty robust.
 
Boat ran flawlessly all weekend long so I'm thinking I got lucky. Thanks for the input.

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think of it like netraul dropping a car, or launching at the strip 3 things can happen.

Its fine, no damage.. most likley unless you make a habit of it
It breaks instantly... you would know this
it tweaks it or shears 90% of it and it will show its face the next time or 2 its stressed.

GO run the boat on plane a few times, if all is good, probably 100 % fine.
 
Same kind of thing happened to me but it was my elbow that hit the port shifter knocking almost back to neutral. Without thinking I quickly put it back forward. I didn't get any noise, thud, or anything. about a month after that, my tranny started remaining in forward even though it was in neutral. I could still go into reverse but the clutch plate definitely warped. I had about 700 hours on it.

So a new tranny went in last Spring..

around 90 hours on the new one with no problems since.

Hope yours turns out to be ok!
 
if you did not get a thud, or a hit then betting you never dissengauged from forward and the problem was coming either way
 
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