Took my parents for a ride last night on my 21 Scout SF, noticed the starboard side wouldn’t go up/down when I moved the tab. On the trailer I tried the tabs and the left control moved the stbd trim tab and the right control moved the port tab. Is this correct? Seems wrong to me.
Also, the port tab wasn’t moving. I could hear the gear trying to move when pressing UP but nothing when pressing DOWN. The tab never moved when either up or down was pressed. Any thoughts? I’m thinking I could cross the wires to the controls and see if it’s the control button not working. If that doesn’t work, then it’s the actuator and I’d need to replace?
Could be the switch which is easy to check. Like you said, swap out the starboard and port switches, if problem persists but on the opposite side then it is the switch which is an easy repair. One tip, when you pull the switch mount out of the dash take several pictures with your phone before you pull any wires out. There’s maybe 8 wires running all over the place in the back of those switches and they are easy to mix up. Take pics or make a diagram to keep things straight.
If you do need a new actuator that is a pretty easy fix too, just more expensive.
After a couple years, the “pop buttons” rubber can deteriorate and corrode behind there. The wires on mine are isolated after that pop button, and have individual wires to each side, so unless you had someone else hack together your trim tab elecronics I would assume it is the control button panel.
To test the actuators, you can either check the deutsch connectors downstream with a car battery, or try and figure out the pins on the back of the control tab too.
You can swap the wiring at the deutsch connectors to see if it’s a bad actuator or a bad switch or control box. If you don’t have the connectors (orange and gray), then you simply cut the two wires and splce them to the opposite side’s pair.
When you press the starboard side button on the switch, the port side actuator should be moving, and vice versa. Lift on a particular side of the transom affects the opposite side’s bow.
When you push bow down on your port side, the tab on the starboard should go down. Whoever installed them on my current boat didn’t get that memo or read the instructions so its the opposite. I’ll have to get in there and fix it when I get a chance.
Don’t look at the switches in relationship to the tabs, but rather how you want that side of the boat to react. I.E. - If you want the port side of the boat to go down, then you push “down” on the port side switch which should activate the starboard side tab.
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Found the problem today. I just touched the wire in the back of the panel, it worked! Just wiggled loose a bit, thankfully. Then had to change the trailer winch since a forklift may have hit it and sheared the gear pin. If anyone runs into West Marine and wants to change out a trailer winch, stay away from the Fulton line. They are the BMW of trailer winches; meaning they put bolts right next to each other with different sized heads, then you have to take apart the entire winch to put it together, and then reassemble. A 15 minute job took an hour since I had to empty the garage for all my tools today. Oh, and I had to re-drill holes for the winch since it isn’t standard size