Luckily for me it died when I was pulling the boat out. It's a Merc 4-stroke tiller 2001 I believe. Took the hood off the motor and found one of the screws on the starter (the bottom one) that has the grounding loop was loose. Retightened it and now when I press "up" on the tilt the solenoid just "clicks" and then when I press "down" it rrrrrrrrr's very quietly....Any suggestions??

Thanks!!

So, when you press down it works, but not up, right?

It sounds like the relay is shot - there's one for up and one for down. I'd swap the relays around (look for where a red wire and a green wire run into a square box mounted to the side of your motor - you may need to remove a plastic cover, and the other one will have a red wire and a blue wire) and swap the relays around and see if it will go up now and not down. If that's the case you need a new relay.. a pretty cheap fix.

marine_man

Technically neither work. Just makes a running sound but neither of them makes the motor move.

About the only thing left then that's easier is to check to make sure the manual tilt valve screw is tight (on the rh or lh side of the motor mounting bracket outside the boat, toward the bottom of it there should be a slot with a big flat head screw behind it - make sure that's tight). If that doesn't do it you've got a bigger issue that I can't help much with.

marine_man

Found that there were 2 ring terminals that came disconnected.......the other one was buried under some wires so I didn't see it until I had taken out both the solenoids and starter......It's Working again though!!!! Woohoo!

Glad to hear you figured it out!

marine_man