lilngineer
Cadet
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2007
- Messages
- 11
Hi,
I have been helping a friend of the family diagnose his shifting problems on a 1986 Sea Ray Sundancer with a Mercury 260 Alpha One.
About 1.5 years ago, he had a shop replace/adjust all of the shift cables on the boat. Since that time, he has had problems with the boat not shifting correctly. Specifically, it is extremely difficult to dock the boat on his hoist because going between forward and reverse often revs the engine before kicking into gear and causes the boat to lunge forward or reverse. It is also difficult to find neutral.
At first, I went through the cable adjustment procedure in the service manual, but the outcome was the same. I then disconnected the cables both at the control and the engine to check them. When I removed the control, I found that the shift cable had been slightly due to tight routing so we opted to replace it again. That was yesterday.
Unfortunately, I replaced the cable, readjusted both shift cable and the same problem exists. I did verify that both cables move freely with no binding. Also moving the cable by hand going to the drive does engage the clutch for both forward and reverse by turning the prop manually ccw and cw respectively. Yet, following the adjustment procedure in the manual yields the same results.
I tried my own tweaking of the adjustments and got reverse working ok, but forward was not going into gear properly. Its almost as though there is no sweet spot in the adjustment.
Could any of this be related to the shift cutout switch? If so, how should it be performing? How can I test it?
Any other ideas for root cause?
I appreciate and help or comments you can provide.
Thanks,
Jason
I have been helping a friend of the family diagnose his shifting problems on a 1986 Sea Ray Sundancer with a Mercury 260 Alpha One.
About 1.5 years ago, he had a shop replace/adjust all of the shift cables on the boat. Since that time, he has had problems with the boat not shifting correctly. Specifically, it is extremely difficult to dock the boat on his hoist because going between forward and reverse often revs the engine before kicking into gear and causes the boat to lunge forward or reverse. It is also difficult to find neutral.
At first, I went through the cable adjustment procedure in the service manual, but the outcome was the same. I then disconnected the cables both at the control and the engine to check them. When I removed the control, I found that the shift cable had been slightly due to tight routing so we opted to replace it again. That was yesterday.
Unfortunately, I replaced the cable, readjusted both shift cable and the same problem exists. I did verify that both cables move freely with no binding. Also moving the cable by hand going to the drive does engage the clutch for both forward and reverse by turning the prop manually ccw and cw respectively. Yet, following the adjustment procedure in the manual yields the same results.
I tried my own tweaking of the adjustments and got reverse working ok, but forward was not going into gear properly. Its almost as though there is no sweet spot in the adjustment.
Could any of this be related to the shift cutout switch? If so, how should it be performing? How can I test it?
Any other ideas for root cause?
I appreciate and help or comments you can provide.
Thanks,
Jason
