Trojan Boat Forum

After sitting for approx a year, I was able to fire off one of the engines of the F 28 I purchased recently . The engine is coupled to a Hurth v drive. I know the previous owner and know for a fact this transmission was working correctly prior to laying up the boat. Here is my issue. The engine starts fine , and as soon as it does, the trans is in forward. The selector shaft at the transmission has NO effect on shifting it out of gear , or reverse. I had this happen to me once before on a velvet drive , and it was a result of stuck clutch packs? could this be a similar problem? I was told by several people that it could free itself up? boy I hope so, as this boat has been a comedy of errors since purchase date, and I would really hate to be shopping for a transmission at this point, HELP??? lol

I have experience with 2 F28s and both had paragon V drives. They are 77 and 78. If worse comes to worse I have two extra paragon v drives as one boat is being scraped. Both drives work. What year is yours and engines.

When you put in reverse nothing happens ? If it was stuck forward clutches when you put it in reverse it would stall or pop them lose and go into reverse . Is the fluid full ? was anything done to it ?

Be sides the fluid check the lever on the trans and make sure you have full movement at lever on the trans and that its not lose on the shift shaft . I am surprised you have a Hurth I assume its been repowered . Do you know what model Hurth ?

I assume its been repowered at some point,
it has twin mercruiser 350's, with Hurth HSW 630V

the movement of the shift lever is fine, not spinning about the shaft, the fluid seems slightly dirty , but not terrible.
as mentioned, it does nothing when shifting ,
what did happen , when I first started the engine, it did nothing at all, no gear engagement whatsoever , as if the transmission was not there,
then after adding maybe a 1/4 of a quart of fluid it engaged to forward. As I said the fluid is full, (to the hashmark on the dipstick). Is it possible that the valve body (or whatever diverts the fluid to engage forward and reverse) is clogged ? What I plan on doing is draining all the fluid and replacing it , adding maybe a little brake fluid to "rinse" the system. If not ,, guess Im looking for a trans.

NO BRAKE FLUID . It could be the control valve ( part where the shift shaft is ) or It could have lost its prime , try over filling it and see is it helps ( drain afterwards )

prowler,,
lost its prime? mmmm interesting, as it did start working after i added like a little bit of fluid. Can that happen? wow, I hope thats it,,,

well Prowler,,, gotta say thank you, I knew there was a reason for joining this forum. did as you said and presto,, working trans,. I did also remove the paper filter, that was in the filter housing, it was no doubt causing a fluid flow issue as well, but again thanks everything is working . Never heard of that but I guess anything will and can happen. The reason I mentioned the brake fluid , is about a hundred years or so ago, when I was working in an automotive shop we used to do that to clean up older cars with messed up valve bodies,, it worked pretty good. by cleanning out all the funky trans fluid etc, then we would add fresh fluid and it was fine.

Glad its working now . BTW the reason I said no on the brake fluid is that it can cause seal issues ( swelling ) . It can temporally fix some issues by swelling / the seals but they most likely will fail in the near future .