Ok a while back I went to the solenoids to help my hydro system operate smoother. But as of lately I have run into a little snag. I have the older style trim units with the 3 wires and because I have the 3 wire pump, I have to use the mercury style solenoids. 4 of em, 1 for up, down, forward and reverse.
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You'll notice in the second pic that I redid my mounting bracket and modified it to hold the solenoids close to the pumps for shorter runs and a cleaner look. In looking at the picture, power trim is on the right and reverse is on the left. Everything was working fine until recently. I have had 2 of these solenoids go out in the last month, and its the same one each time. The bottom left solenoid (reverse) keeps going out. At first I thought it might be the switch so I swapped the leads on the switch and guess what, it will go into reverse, but won't go back to forward. So I swapped out the switch, same thing. I can take a screw driver and jump the power leads on the solenoids and operate it just fine, but the switching contacts in the solenoid isn't working. You can't take these bitches apart either to see whats what. I also bought good shit (so I thought), there all Mercury trim solenoids for a 225. Just don't know WTF to do about that one solenoid. At $30 a pop, its getting kinda old.

Damn no electricians. Decided to try a different one. Been using Mercury trim solenoids. Decided to try one from Trombetta, it has a amp rating of 200A and a surge of 300A which should be more than enough. Well see.

did you check how the solenoid wasnt functioning? id pull it off and put power to the switch and check if its the contacts or switch thats bad.. depending how old and where ya got em they may swap them out. my local dealer swapped out my merc trim relays that were almost a year old..

Switch is fine. I installed the trombetta and it works fine. I plane on cutting open the mercury one to see what actually failed on it.

cant try a winch solenoid ? thats what i had running the trim on my gtr untill i bought the control box mercury trim solenoid might not be able to carry the amps volts needed to do the revers on the prodrive for the amount of time it takes to do it might be wrong on this but would be worth a shot ?

I have the older 3-wire mercury trim pumps. I can't use the reversing solenoid like the newer motors have. The older motors have the reversing capability built into the motor itself. They have 2 hots, Blue and Green with black being ground. So I need a solenoid on each hot, thus the 4 solenoids for up, down, rev, fwd. Its basically a big ass relay, but its the ones merc uses. But the strain of rev in the thick shit may be too much. So I'm trying a heavy duty mofo.