Transmission Help

I have a 84 CC with a bad transmission. It fails going forward, some forward movement in gear but never kicks in when power is applied, engages and moves fine in reverse, failed while towing a skier and either fluid was low or old/contaminated. I have flushed/fixed the fluid problem with no change in symptoms. The transmission is a Velvet Drive.

I will have the transmission out soon to possibly deliver to a repair shop. But if I wanted to do it myself, can someone recommend a manual or place to buy a rebuild kit and/or parts. Do I need any special tools? Any ideas on cost? I have never done this before so any help is appreciated.

Thanks for the reply.

The transmission is out of the boat, no problems so far. I don't believe the pump is bad since it works fine in reverse.

Would anyone recommend this manual for the first timer? -
http://www.skidim.com/prodinfo.asp?number=L190022

Before I took the transmission out, I was able to give it some juice in reverse and it accelerated well. Because of that I think the pump is fine.

It let loose all of a sudden and I did not witnessed any noticeable problems beforehand.

I found the manual in the reference section, thanks! I will look through it this week sometime and see what I want to do.

Here is a good way to figure transmissions out, Im bringing this up because you said reverse worked fine and its not the pump. Imagine 2 swimming pools in your back yard one being forward and one being reverse. the forward pool has a hole in it 1 foot accross and water is pouring it out of the hole. you have a pump 14 inches accross pouring water in the pool, but the pump is only pumping 11 inches worth of water, eventually the pool is going to drain. Now the reverse pool has a 6 inch hole in it and you have 11 inches of water pouring into it, eventually the water will overflow over the top of the pool. Transmissions work on oil volume and restrictions, restrictions create pressure, pumps dont, If you remove the restrictions (hard orings, worn shafts etc..)
you remove the oil pressure thus renoving the ability for the clutch pack to hold and then it slips

Just my two cents, but if you are going to go through all that trouble to rebulid your tranny you might as well replace the pump as well. That would be a bummer to go through all that work, reinstall it back in the boat only to have the pump being bad.

I think so also, change the pump while it's out.. Why take it out again in the summer when your supposed to be out skiing. That's why god made winter, so we had time to work on the boat and not lose out on skiing time.

got the interior out, and the motor out, good time to put a dripless in, also the prop shaft flange was wobbling on the shaft, I'll put on v-blocks tommorow to check for run out. I'll shoot some pics tommorow, also are you re propping? let me know.
The wobble on the coupling is a good indication of some mis-alignment along the way, the wear is egg shaped, you do have a 10-18-002 trans in there luckily because it has a very high capacity bearing in the back. Give me a call tommorow

87, not sure if you saw this- looks like Acme has a new prop for you RH 454 guys: Acme 1260

Hi Knewt, the other guys will have you on the right track but it probably needs to come out ASAP. What's the colour of the oil? Gunmetal metallic is a bad colour for trans oil!!(I should know). Ours turned out to have popped the snap ring holding the forward clutch pack in (which did a few laps of the box and chewed lots of stuff up). As RPM builds it can't maintain pressure on the clutches and it slips. At the same time there's nothing holding the ring gear in its correct spot and it can wriggle back and contact the front of the pinion carrier (metal-to-metal) hence the spinning in neutral.    Some things that will cause this are:
Getting the big internal snap rings in the forward clutch pack in the wrong order. The slightly thinner one goes outside, thick one is for the diaphram spring to rest on. The thick one will snap in to place outside but won't seat - hence it pops easily
Too small oil cooler lines, causing too much back pressure.
Stuck pressure relief valve also causing too much back pressure. You can loosen the top hose going to the oil cooler, then rev it up in gear, oil should hose out as the rpm increases. It it doesn't the valve's probably stuck closed.
My contact in Perth, Australia that's been doing them for years says he always replaces the oil pump. Good luck, this was very frustrating for us!!