New Yanmar SD 60 Saildrive

[monte]

Well I guess I will find out soon enough. Our SD60 saildrive has been slipping a bit over the last couple of days. We will be motoring and we hear a slight high pitch whine and lose thrust. Not completely but where we should be doing 4kn we are doing 3kn. I'm guessing this can only be the clutch. It happens in fwd and reverse. The flexifold props are working fine, just cleaned and propsped.
I dropped into the local yanmar agent today. He asked how many hrs and I told him around 350. He pulled out a little bubblewrap packet of clutch plates/seals/washers etc and said I probably need one of these. Ok, it's just a few washers I think...so how much is that? ..€800.. (He pointed at part of it and said 'silver!' ) Oh and we have to remove your engine, slide it forward a bit etc. Er...ok, how much is that? Oh about 4-5hrs no problem. Hmm ok, so, this is covered by warranty right? Well, maybe...we have to email yanmar and sometimes it takes a while for them to get back. Ok...how long is a while? Up to 4 months...!! So it looks like Jen is getting some silver for Christmas, probably not what she imagined though...
Anyway, will keep you updated (going to read the warranty book)

[meirriba]

Originally Posted by monte

Well I guess I will find out soon enough. Our SD60 saildrive has been slipping a bit over the last couple of days. We will be motoring and we hear a slight high pitch whine and lose thrust. Not completely but where we should be doing 4kn we are doing 3kn. I'm guessing this can only be the clutch. It happens in fwd and reverse. The flexifold props are working fine, just cleaned and propsped.
I dropped into the local yanmar agent today. He asked how many hrs and I told him around 350. He pulled out a little bubblewrap packet of clutch plates/seals/washers etc and said I probably need one of these. Ok, it's just a few washers I think...so how much is that? ..€800.. (He pointed at part of it and said 'silver!' ) Oh and we have to remove your engine, slide it forward a bit etc. Er...ok, how much is that? Oh about 4-5hrs no problem. Hmm ok, so, this is covered by warranty right? Well, maybe...we have to email yanmar and sometimes it takes a while for them to get back. Ok...how long is a while? Up to 4 months...!! So it looks like Jen is getting some silver for Christmas, probably not what she imagined though...
Anyway, will keep you updated (going to read the warranty book)

Check again the access to clutch issue. I was told that to do the lapping on the SD-50 cones the engine has to be moved. Then I found instructions on the web how the drive can be opened and cones taken out without moving the engine.
I am not sure about the SD-60 but I believe it should be checked.

[TouchOfGrey]

Sorry to hear that. Historically, in cars at least, clutches were omitted from one's warranty. Understandably I might add as my father-in-law (may he rest in peace), after dropping us off at the airport in our Honda, rode the clutch for four miles and completely destroyed it!
However, in my 450, although it has 600+ hrs, 400 of them were done when "professionals" brought her across the atlantic. I'm not clear how clutches should wear and then fail prematurely when they have not been abused.

So how robust are these SD60s? I got 8 years (5 of which she was in charter in the BVI) before I had tranny problems with my SD40s.

Yanmar, are you out there????

[monte]

I did notice on reading the warranty that the warranty period is 2 yrs/500 hrs for pleasure craft, but that drops to 1yr 500hrs for any commercial vessels. I guess 600+ hrs is pretty clearly out of the warranty period, but still...600 hrs each motoring across the Atlantic is pretty insane. That's around 6000 miles motoring at cruising revs, probably 4000 miles at higher revs (about the distance from les sables d'ollonne to BVIs ...)

[Emerald Sea]

Learned something from the Yanmar service manager today in Cape Town. SeaScape provide Yanmars to all the Caine & Robertson/Moorings yachts and have surpassed 300 SD's to date. He told me that while the SD60 has been quite reliable over previous models, the one occurring issue they see is where the gear lever is not correctly positioned i.e. your control cable does not engage a gear to its full position, whether thats fwd, neutral or reverse. The control cable MUST engage the lever at its correct position. Running the drive in a partially-engage position can damage the gears. This event typically happens as the control cables stretch over time and you need to check their position setting on a regular basis and adjust if necessary. Add this to your PMS.

[RichMac]

My SD60 clutch started slipping after 200 hrs, 18 months. I am not happy, it has been treated well. The gearbox is now being serviced in Corfu, Greece on warranty. (in theory!) It's much harder to service this gearbox than the SD50, as the engine has to be moved forward 100mm (4") to clear the shaft.

Comparing the service manuals, this gearbox is very similar to the old Volvo 130S. How come Yanmar have all the problems, does anybody know who actually makes the gearbox, ZF or Yanmar? The clutches seem far too small to transmit the power, it seems they do, but not for long!

The gear lever travel is critical, but there is nothing to measure from. The drawing looks easy, but hard in real life, I made a bracket to hold a ruler. Yanmar provide a measuring bracket, but we don't have one. It's crazy that adjustment could be causing the problems, but it's hard to measure, nobody would bother.

So this could be the way to check the travel. First disconnect the cable, and measure the position of the inner hole of the lever. There is a little backlash, so measure both neutral positions, then use the midpoint. Then measure the travel for forward and reverse gears. The required travel should be no more than 24mm. Then fit the cable, and make sure the positions are within the neutral, and beyond the gear selected positions. Yanmar say the provided travel should be greater than 30mm.

I checked this when the gearbox failed, I think it was fairly right. But I will be checking the gear lever travel regularly in future. I hope this will avoid future problems.

SD60 Service manual:- https://www.dropbox.com/s/yifapa515r...anual.pdf?dl=0

[Fishdonga]

Steve
in a previous post you mentioned the lever adjustment on SD60s having to be accurate. The manual says 30 mm MINIMUM travel. What do you get and how do you adjust that travel?

[RichMac]

FishDonga
It's important that the cable moves the lever past the point of full engagement. So, you disconnect the cable terminal from the lever, and compare the travel of each. You can get more lever travel by using the inner hole on the lever. Yanmar say the cable should be moving 30mm, and the lever hole no more than 24 mm. So the cable is moving past full engagement.
With my gearbox, the cable travel is ok. I have had 2 gearbox failures, in each case the lever travel was about 25mm. You can't change this, it's just an indicator of a faulty gearbox that will fail.
A good indicator of clutch health, is the clunk when you engage gear. A good clunk shows good clutch grip. In mine, over time the engagement would get softer, with no noise, then it would start to slip.

[Fishdonga]

Thanks for that, not sure how the cable pin hole can move any less than the cable, but I will check this weekend

[Fishdonga]

OK
I checked it all out this weekend. cable travel is 35mm ahead and astern so all is good there.
Lever travel was 24 and 27mm, I followed the manual and adjusted the top cover to even out the numbers. I got about 25.5 and 25.5mm but I still have the problem of slow or reluctant engagement.
This gets me into real trouble on occasion when maneuvering.
I intend to change out the clutch plates etc.
I read somewhere that the Yanmar JH57 engine has to moved forwards to enable SD top half cover removal . Does anyone know if this is correct?

[boatbod]

Yanmar have issued a bulletin on shift lever adjustment for the SD60. According to them, it is just as important not to over-travel as it is not to under-travel. From memory, I think their spec says 30mm +1/-0.