Throttle Base Assembly Replacement G23 G25 GS 210/230 2015+

[bturner]

You guys are killing me here.... Now I'm 80% of the way there of doing this. If I don't sell it this spring, this is going to be a project for early summer.

[Scooter G]

Nice hack Brichter14.
And yes, I have had that stainless steel plate off more than once, I get it.

[bturner]

Well now that I'm using the boat again and falling back in love, I just pulled the trigger on the throttle assembly. I'll post back with anything that is different with the installation on a 2016 sport 200V with the gauge package. I think a lot of it will be the same (hopefully) but my side panel is completely different and I can reach the connectors from the back side of the panel behind the driver's seat. I'm also thinking that If I can get the seat out easily I may do that to give my fat butt more room to work. I know doing this on the 70 Mustang makes a huge difference in the stress factor.

I'm going to use this as a project while on vacation on Lake Erie in 2 weeks so it's going to be a while for that update. Lake Erie, at least where we're at, provides plenty of non-boating days due to the 2 - 3 foot chop that is prevalent. Great boating when it's nice but those days can be hard to come by some summers.

[Scooter G]

Well now, I knew it was only a matter of time until you pulled that trigger. You gave that way too much thought, lol.
Hopefully you are on a slip for that project, and not dockside with 3' rolling chop...

[bturner]

It'll be on the trailer next to the garage. Good and bad with great lake boating and sometimes you need to learn how to make a lot of lemonade. I've blocked out and buffed several project boats over the years waiting for that good water.....

I was perfectly happy ignoring the neutral lockout until I saw your post.

[Scooter G]

Nice!
I'll take the blame for that

[bturner]

Well I bit the bullet today when I woke up to this and this was the calm part of the day. We had 4 footers breaking on shore this morning. Nice crop of seaweed to go along with it as well.....



So that left me some choices....

1. Play with the timing on the Mustang, which would give me an excuse to go beat on it.
2. Start drinking beer at 10 AM. Wife's here so that's out.
3. Clean up the beach.
4. Do the throttle base on the Nautique.

I have to tell you 3 and 4 were pretty close as I'm not to keen on fiberglass rash and it's been pretty hot lately. Ran the options by the wife (with the exception of the beer drinking option) and she pretty much shamed me into fixing the boat. So here goes.....

I'll start by saying this wouldn't have been bad at all if I had all my tools from at home instead of doing this at the cottage with "cottage tools". I'll also say that the interiors on your boats look more detailed and expensive than mine as you'll see in the pictures. Doing the base should be the same on the 200 Nautique as it's the same dash and cockpit interior. So here we go.....

This is the dash and throttle area on the boat. The top pad on mine doesn't need to be removed as you can get to everything from the bottom. To get to the throttle base you need to remove the top side padded interior trim piece. This uses the typical Christmas tree fasteners. Mine came off pretty easy so I'm thinking someone had been in there before me. I started at the dash and made my way back until the panel was free.



I wasn't really committed to doing this job until I had the panel off so at this point I decided to remove the throttle lever. This is the same as all the other throttle levers. Pull the cap off and unscrew the retaining hex bolt then pull it off. Mine was held on by a 3/16 hex cap screw.






Then the screws holding side plastic panel in place. Not a very good picture but there were easy to see shouldered screws hold the panel on around the perimeter.

I didn't need to remove the entire panel as I could pull it back far enough to get to the heads of the screw to remove the throttle base.



Getting to and removing the 3 through bolted screws and one wood screw wasn't too difficult but there's just no way to avoid getting fiberglass rash and some minor cuts doing this. This is probably deep down why I didn't want to do this job. At least until latter on.



Mine was easy to unplug and plug in the new unit. I basically just carefully removed the old one out and plugged the new one in.




This however is where the fun began. What I didn't notice as I began to congratulate myself on how smart I was and how easy this was, that if you look closely at the old and new versions they're basically inverted. Yeah, that was going to cause some pain shortly as you have to modify the hole to fit the new version. I had read about this before and there was even a link to the template but I forgot all about this until I had everything apart. Remember that part I said earlier about cottage tools?



Yup, I own battery powered DeWalt power tools that would have made short work of this like a die grinder, or maybe an oscillating tool or even the good old fashioned Dremel with a barrel bit would have been great but these are not part of the cottage tool package. What is available in the cottage tool kit for this job you ask? A hand file set which the BIL bought recently and I was glad to have. After about 45 minutes of filing and fitting I finally got the throttle based fitted and mounted.



The rest was just reversing the process until you're back to the beginning. I didn't break any mounting hardware and they all punched back on pretty easily. Just take your time lining everything up. If something doesn't want to go back on, stop and make sure everything is lined up and in place.



I wasn't able to take the boat out for a ride for obvious reasons but I did do a quick start, which tested the neutral position of the throttle. Once started I quickly pushed the lockout button which blinked blue then moved the throttle into reverse, the light around the button lit up solid blue, I gave it a very slight rev and the boat stayed in neutral.. That was the first time I had seen this other than when I took the boat out for a test drive some 5 years ago. I'm going to say this one is fixed.

On a scale from 1 to 10 I'd call this a 5. It would have been a 3 had I either had the tools I needed or the new version was the same as the old.

This was the last of the big ticket items I had. I replaced the small screed you can see above the throttle (wish I had known JP could fix these before buying mine) and replaced the temp / depth sender transducer. All I have now is a very small nick on one of the walkthrough panels to get after. All and all a pretty satisfying project year.

[Scooter G]

Love it!
Way to tackle the project bturner, nice work!