Re: Adding a second control station for throttle/shift
Cool project!
As for shifting accidently on dual lever helms, my dad's single engine 25 foot Chris Craft cruiser used a surprisingly poorly designed setup. Can't remember if it was Morse or not but basically the throttle and shift levers angled toward each other at the top where the knobs were, each lever coming out of opposite sides of the control box. The result was a very narrow space between the two levers.
Problem was, often when you grabbed the gear level to change gears, your knuckles would bump the adjacent throttle lever and push it in whatever direction you were shifting. Into reverse was not too bad because you were just knocking the throttle down to the idle stop which you were near anyway.
Shifting forward was a bit more problematic as you could inadvertenly goose the throttle at the same time, with unpleasant results...You always had to be carful to keep your hand on top of the gear lever with your knuckles pointed up. Luckily the boat was relatively heavy so that throttle response was sluggish enough to allow time to grab it back down again if you firewalled it, but you looked like a noob with the boat bobbing and jerking around with associated engine revving. Basically, a human-factors nightmare...
Anyway, long-winded way of suggesting that if you get a dual lever setup for the second helm position, make sure there's enough clearance for you hand, especially if it's a big un!
