[QUOTE=pierview;9275]Had an interesting 4th of July. Was pulling into a fore & aft mooring around 4PM, put the trans. into reverse & got nothing but clanking... same for forward.

Towed into a marina the next morning & had the transmission pulled to find that the flex plate plastic insert between the 2 pieces had disintegrated and fallen out (see pictures).

The interesting part of this is that the tranny always made a clanking sound at low RPM. It passed the survey like this and I had a diesel tech on board once who said it was normal and was called "transmission backlash". I did notice this year when I shut the engine off it made a sound like 2 pieces of metal clanking together which, in retrospect, was exactly what was happening

After replacing the plate all the clanking stopped so obviously it was not "normal".

I post this because others have told me they get the same noise. You can't check this like checking your oil, but if anyone is getting a similar noise, be aware.

On a posiitive note, all this happened as I was in the harbor, not going down the East River or thru Hell Gate. I got towed into Norwalk Cove Marina on the 5th. They told me they were short staffed but would try to look at it. I got in at 10:45AM, they had the tranny and plate out and a new one ordered by 1:30PM and by noon the next day I was ready to go. AND, they didn't charge me for two nights in a slip. Good folks for anyone sailing the LI Sound area if you need repairs.[/QUOTE]

There have been a number of reported failures of the R&D damper plates. Teplace it with the Sachs damper plate and you'll be fine...