Ryan8886

When attempting to lift the electric hatch on my 1994 Dominator, the ram moves VERY slow and trips the circuit breaker about 4 times before the hatch is fully lifted. Any ideas?? I'm thinking motor on the lift is going as opposed to a breaker issue. To my knowledge, it's the original piece. If so, is it more cost efficient to have the hatch motor rebuilt or just replace the whole unit? Also is it a 24" or 18"??

Gizmo

Ryan, I just saw your post. A good friend of mine has a 94' Dominator, too. His hatch lift has quit completely. His was working very slow for most of this past summer. Just curious as to what did to get yours right. ( repair or replace) Thanks

FX10

Those electric screw rams go, and they aren't cheap to replace. Never heard of anyone trying to rebuild one of the units though. It would be alot cheaper.

Ryan8886

Gizmo,

Hasn't been repaired yet....had to wait until spring. However, after some poking around, I'm thinking it might be something as simple as low hydraulic fluid. The ram is hydraulic, not electric, and shares a resovoir with the trim tabs. The guy I bought it from mentioned that the tabs didn't seem to have much impact on the handling of the boat. Dipping heavy into the tabs should provoke noticeable changes in the handling on that boat. When surveyed, the tabs both worked fine, however, that was on the trailer with no resistance load on them.

I had limited time before it got wrapped up and couldn't really get a good look but it looked like the pump resovoir might have been almost empty. My thought is that there is only limited hydraulic pressure, causing the pump motor to overheat when lifting the hatch, tripping the breaker. Same thing would be limiting tabs from being effective.

Don't really know if the theory holds water or not....or where the fluid may have gone (can't see any in the bilge) unless it leaked out slowly over time (this guy was not exactly the maintainance king). But that's where I'm starting in the spring. It would sure be nice if I can get just ONE cheap fix on this thing!

Gizmo

Thanks for the response. It will be a spring to-do in his case also.