Volvo Penta Reverse Gear Failures

[dclagett]

In the last 10 months I have heard about 3 RT25SCs having a reverse gear failure, all with Volvo Penta engines. Several years ago Cummings Diesels had a problem with their reverse gears that were made by ZF, same manufacture as the Volvo Penta reverse gears. It turns out that Cummings ZF failures were due to an insufficient toritional interface between the engine and reverse gear. This interface smooths out the bumps comming from the engine into the transmission. As I understand Cummings corrected the problem. I am wondering if Volvo Penta has a similar problem. It would be interesting to hear from the Tugnuts on who has had a transmission failure, the time on the engine and the make of the engine. I will start:

Failure occured September 2021, Volvo Penta D3 150i-G and 495 hours on engine.

Thanks for your reply

 

[Toucan]

Our transmission clutch pack was destroyed at 1240 hours. Put in entire new ZF transmission as no time to disassemble and wait for needed parts. Back end with solenoids is different from Volvo-Penta sourced variant. Engine is Volvo-Penta 220 HP D3.

Barry and Lynne Thompson
TOUCAN, R-27 Classic

 

[acdfpic]

Mine was August of 2021. I don't have the log book in front of me for the exact time, but it was just hair over 600 hours. One note is that I had an oil sample down just a couple of weeks before without anything unusual being found.

The failure led to being towed...which then led to hydrolock in the engine. Luckily it was only one cylinder, fresh water, and a very short time of the water being in the cylinder.

Volvo wanted $10,400 for the only one available...in Sweden. If you are reading this because you've had a failure, my recommendation is don't even try for a Volvo one. Just get one direct from ZF for a lot less money. I was quoted $3100 air freighted over night from the west coast.

Chris Boyd
RT 25SC
Destined Nomad