Mini Wildcat Maintenance - Newbie Question

The Aquacraft mini wildcat is my first foray into power boating. I've only run it once. The manual says to grease the drive lines after every day of use, so I started to do that. It says to loosen the set screws and slip the drive lines out the back of the boat.

My problem: I've loosened the set screws, heck I've even taken them out, but the drive lines will only slide out about 1/4 inch. The coupler moves toward the stern as I pull on the drive line and stops at the drive line casing, but the drive line won't slide out of the coupler. I'm hesitant to force it in case I break something. The manual shows that the drive line comes out at least an inch if not more and implies that the drive line comes out entirely.

Can anyone advise on the correct procedure? Or on what's going wrong?

TIA

David

Don't mean to be a smart a**, which set screws did you loosen? Not the ones on the motor shaft?! I ask because you say the couplers slide as you are pulling. If you only loosen the ones that actually grab the cable, and if you can use your other hand to stop the coupler while you PULL and TURN the props clock wise, you will get them out. The cable is thin and the end is not soldered, be careful when you have finished greasing, make sure it lines up with the coupler, any mis-alignment can be corrected by giving the motor a nudge here and there. The hull is flexible enough to allow this movement.
If you force the cable to go back to the coupler w/o lining up, the cable may unravel!
MAKE SURE WHEN YOU PULL THE PROPS YOU TURN CLOCK WISE, THIS IS THE OPPOSITE ROTATION OF THE MOTORS ! IF YOU TURN LIKE HOW THE MOTORS ROTATE, YOU RUIN THE THIN CABLES BECAUSE THAT WAY YOU ARE UNRAVELING THE CABLE. TAKE A MOMENT TO LOOK AND YOU WILL KNOW WHAT I MEAN!

Thanks for the quick reply.

And you're not being a smart a**. You were absolutely right. I was loosening the wrong screws. The manual talked about two screws but didn't say that they were on opposite sides of the coupler at the same end. So when I looked at the coupler, I saw two screws (one at each end of the coupler) and loosened them. I noticed what looked to be a gap between the motor shaft and the drive line within the coupler, but didn't twig to what this meant. I didn't think to rotate the coupler to see what the other side looked like. If I had, I would seen the other two screws and realized what was wrong.

Thanks for prodding me to double check that I had my screws loose.:smile:

Glad it worked, I love this boat, the look of the twin drive is nice.
Cheers!
Tim

Now that I have the main issue resolved, there is one other really minor thing---I can't the antenna to stand up. I've slid it all the way into the fitting, but the plastic tube doesn't slide into or onto the fitting, so the antenna folds over and lies on the hull or in the water. There must a trick to it. Or is it really intended to lie flat despite what the picture on the box shows.

TIA

Mine needed a good poke, at the expense of the fitting, in retrospect, is it possible that you use a knife or a pair of scissors to cut one end of the tube in such a way that it has a smaller tip . Another words cut diagonally so the tip is not the full size of the tube right away. Very small cut will do, the fitting does and needs to expand to accept the tube. By making a smaller tip you save yourself the initial grief of shoving it in by brute force and risking damaging the fitting.

That worked. The end of the tube was already cut in a diagonal as you know, so I trimmed it a bit to give it even more of a point. I won't say it was easy getting it in, but with only a little effort, I managed to get it into the fitting. And the fitting doesn't look damaged at all. Thanks again Tim for all your help.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DavidJ

That worked. The end of the tube was already cut in a diagonal as you know, so I trimmed it a bit to give it even more of a point. I won't say it was easy getting it in, but with only a little effort, I managed to get it into the fitting. And the fitting doesn't look damaged at all. Thanks again Tim for all your help.

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:thumbup: :beerchug: