To lock or not?

[centrefire]

G'day Fellow fish feeders,

I aplogise for what must seem to be one of the most basic questions to many...
My previous outboards in another life were all hydraulic trim 'an tilt things. This one being a Yamaha 30 has neither.
Do I, when on the gallop, flick the lock levers in the down position. In other words, the leg will then hopefully flick up to some degree if an immoveable object is whacked?
I realise that with bigger throttle openings in reverse, it would require the lock to be on to prevent kick up.
All this only occured to me after having read about the unfortunate fella who connected with something on the plane last week, and was flung out of his boat.

Cheers and thanks

Vaughn.

[Chas & Clarry]

I always had mine unlocked when I had that type of set up (many many years), but frankly don't know if it would actually make a difference. It jsut felt like the safe thing to do.

Certainly needed to be in the habit of locking down if I was going to hit the reverse hard...very embarassing noise and water splashing everywhere resulted as the engine flew up out of the water if I didn't do that...bit of an attention grabber at busy boat ramps!!

[tunaticer]

On my motors the lock down feature would give way to an obstruction before any damages were made to the motor or the boat. That is not to say that all motors are that way or if corrosion has not over ridden the safety feature of letting the motor kick up on impact.
I always have mine locked down in position unless i specifically want it in shallow drive mode or right up.

[Noelm]

most motors have a 'reverse" lock setup that when you move the gear lever to reverse, the motor is locked, doesn't your motor (Yamaha) have this?

[Noelm]

I might add, some Mercs have a kind of different way to do this, they are always locked, unless in forward, so to lift the motor up, you need to engage forward gear, that eems to work Ok too.

[centrefire]

Thanks for the input.
I seem to have found the answer on some or other American forum.
Facing aft, looking at the motor, there are two levers. One on the left, other on the right. If the right lever is depressed, the motor will kick up on striking anything, so should be left down for forward travel and up for reversing. Left lever in the down position allows the motor to be elevated for shallow water etc.
Always pondered the reason for there being TWO levers. Now if I can remember all this, it may save my transom from being ripped off and flung 40 feet in the air one day...http://www.ausfish.com.au/vforum/images/icons/icon12.png