I just recently bought an '87 Procraft/Astroglass 16.6 ft. off a guy. It has a 135 Mariner on it and the only problem the boat has was the tilt/trim wouldn't work. The guy had a brand new tilt motor put in not even a month ago. The problem was, at least I thought, that the goober put power steering fluid in the tilt system. I THOUGHT this was the problem, being that it is a lot thinner than hydrolic fluid. I flushed out all the power steering fluid and then put tilt/trim fluid in, but when I go to try and use it, you can here the trim motor running but the motor doesn't budge. I'm definately no boat motor mechanic and was wondering if there was something I was missing. I'm sure that it could be something stupid I missed (at least I hope). Just wondering what I should check to get this thing going.

Thanks in advance.

I just noticed that the manual lever wasn't engaged. Does the motor have to be lifted all the way up to engage it?

Make you the manual release valve is closed.  There is usually a hole on one side of the transome mount and uses a screwdriver to turn the release.  Clockwise is normally the closed.   I don't work on black motors so other than checking the manual release, don't no much more to tell you.  Could be a packing blowing by on one of the cylinders, could be a valve stuck, could be he got something out wrong or out of place installing the motor.

I can't seem to find this valve? I'm not sure if it is closed or not. I know that we lifted the motor all the way up and filled it with tilt/trim fluid and on the way down I could feel the pressure build up but it still wouldn't raise up with the tilt/trim. The motor seems to be running. Any help finding this valve or anything else?

And when we lowered the motor down this time, with everything tight, when the pressure was created, fluid started leaking out everywhere, we cant locate the leak?

While I'm not a profession boat mechanic, I do have some experience with tilt/trim units.

If your system is building pressure and then leaking it out, that's the problem. Find the leak and the system will probably work. There isn't that much to a hydraulic trim/tilt system. An electric motor, a hydraulic pump, some hydraulic lines and one or more hydraulic rams.

First thing to do is find the leak. If it's leaking then it can't make pressure to raise and lower the engine.

I would check the fittings but be careful with those. They are very fine threads and very sensitive so don't crank down hard on those or you'll strip the threads and that's not a place you want to go.

Anyway, fix the leak and most likely everything will be fine.

Hydraulic systems can have NO EXTERNAL LEAKS OF ANY KIND to work properly.

If you aren't very mechanical, take it to a boat shop and if it's just a simple leak, they shouldn't charge much to fix that.

Come to think of it, if the guy had the motor repaired/replaced less than a month ago, you might take it back to that same shop and tell them about it. You never know, they might fix it for nothing.

Doesn't hurt to ask.

First off, you can't fill it with it up and put the plug in, it can't hold that much fluid.  The fluid coming out was probably coming from the vent.   If you filled it with the motor up, you have to let the motor all the way down with the fill plug out and let the excess fluid run back out.  Then you raise it back up and put the fill plug in, if you can't put it in with it down.

What BassChump said! Think of it like bleeding the brakes on your truck but on a smaller, more sensitive scale. Air in the lines wreaks havoc.

Way2 kinda said that in a technical way.  

Well, in this particular case, I'm very familiar with this tilt/trim unit. If it's an 87 model, then it's the same as mine and I've been doing a lot of research on mine in the last month so with that said, and while I don't want to offend anyone, it IS filled with the motor in the up position. Also they are self bleeding systems. You don't need to do anything other than run the system up and down 4 or 5 times and it bleeds the air out of the lines by itself.

To make sure it's the same one, answer a few questions for me.

Does it have 3 rams?

Does it have 4 lines coming out of the electric motor that runs the hydraulic pump?

One of the rams is the tilt ram. The ram that looks identical but has no line to it is just a shock. It doesn't really do much.

The 3rd ram is in the middle and will be much shorter but much fatter. This is the trim ram.

If you need to rebuild the rams or the pump, it's almost impossible to find parts for those systems and when you do find parts, they are EXTREMELY EXPENSICE but I found a guy that works on those systems and at a fair price. As far as I can tell, he is the only guy around that rebuilds them rather than just replaces them. He can save you a lot of money. He also is a wealth of information.

In any case, if you need some information on that system or any other for that matter, he is over at MarineEngine.com. His username is rrit. He can answer all your questions about any tilt/trim system.

  Very helpful guy.