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WE: Yeah I kind of agree. Been consciously around boats since about 1985 and I never found myself thinking, "man I really need to put fins on my outboard".....I figured that if it was needed the factory would have done it. Though I must say, my 9'6 Achilles with a John 7.5 suffered badly from ventilation and difficulty in planing when I removed theSE sport 200 foil that came on the engine when I bought it. But air keel inflatables are an odd breed of boat anyway.

I'm still waiting on the manual but I just find it strange that the trim works perfectly, and I mean absolutely flawless, when out of gear at idle, when the engines off and if I am moving forward at minimum idle speed. I would think if the hoses are wrong then it wouldn't work so well......not to mention, if the fluid was low, wouldn't that create an issue at the last 75% raise when I'm raising the engine out of the water? I had my 130 pound wife stand on the foil and it lifted her right out of the water along with the engine. Now I'm pretty mechanically inclined, been ASE certified in everything except transmissions for many years, but this has me stumped. Agreed that I'm kind of going blind until the service manual gets here but man, this is simply a pump motor and hydraulic cylinder......can't be much there to go wrong....if the switches work, the pump motor is new, and the fluid is at the correct level.....well....the lift cylinder is pretty much the last in the line. Not to mention its the most difficult to replace out of all the components. The previous owner probably said " well the pump motor didn't fix it, I'm selling it anyways and it works on the trailer.....the @ell with changing the lift cylinder".............