Re: I'm back. I really thought I was done. I should've known better. Force 120 LU
Well, well, well......I suppose one should expect that when it comes to Emoney, Mr. Murphy and his law tends to work overtime.....sigh.
I believe after some serious detective work, I've come to the bottom of this issue, which in turn will become the beginning of a whole new one. The previous owner was described to me as "an older gentleman"...very common here in Florida. Supposedly, he had all his service work done at one of our local, new-boat service departments, this I've verified during the struggle with the steering cable/tilt tube fiasco. And what I'm surmising is at some point during a lower unit drop/water pump service, the re-insertion of the LU was done incorrectly. FIrst, you should know that this is a 25" shaft motor. For those of you readers that don't know, Mercury used a plastic spacer that the shift shaft coupler sits on in the middle leg and where the two halves of the shift shaft meet. This little round piece of plastic is smaller than the "shelf" it sits on, so if you raise the engine to service the LU, that piece can shift out of position. For example, I used a tiny drop of modeling glue to hold it in place because there was no other way to guarantee that it remained in position. During that last dealership service, I imagine, someone without experience on these older motors, didn't know that there was a plastic spacer in between the 2 shift shafts and especially that it had shifted when they were reinstalling the LU. I'm sure that person probably kept pulling the thing down and looking at the driveshaft and water tube trying to find out what was causing all the resistance. He(she?) eventually FORCED the LU back on, which created a NEW HOLE in the spacer, but allowing the shift shaft to go into the coupler.
Now, this would've meant that the motor did, in fact, shift into all 3 gears (FWD, Rev, Neutral), however I'm sure, because I felt it, that it was a difficult shift, because that little spacer would be binding the lower shaft as it was jammed up in there. I would even venture to say that the owner didn't find this out until on the water, but that's just pure imagination at work. Next, I'd wager that he went back to the dealership complaining of the now difficult shifting. Service department probably inspected the shift cable, found it to be working and knew they had just changed the water pump so their response could've easily been, "Must be a bad lower unit. We can replace that for 'X' (let's estimated $2500.00)". At which point, a somewhat frustrated previous owner had been walking the boat inventory lot while he waited and a smooth salesperson said, "Why not just trade the boat in and get away from all these hassles. You know how those old Force motors are". And, at this point in the story, our PO did just that.
Fast forward several weeks and that leads to me finding the boat advertised, going down to inspect it, and buying it knowing that it had a bad steering cable and was very "tight" when shifting the controls. Since it had a bad cable, I probably subconsciously assumed the control cables were going bad as well. Now, being such an "ounce of prevention" type person, I decided to remove the lower unit and change the fluid and the impeller since we're in Florida and I never believe anyone that says, "It was just changed". Having owned a few boats and removed a few lower units, I expected it to be "snug" for lack of a better word, when I removed it, not knowing that the shift shaft was jammed into instead of through, the spacer. So, when I took the LU off, the pressure of the spacer and the bind it was in caused me to pull the shift shaft out of the shift cam. Which brings me to "now" and the shift cam must have shifted, no pun intended, because I simply can't get the shift shaft to go in far enough or catch anything.
So, it looks as if I'm going to have to remove the LU gear assembly and try and verify my theory hoping that at the least, I can replace the shift cam and put it all back together. I've never even come close to attempting something like this, so I'm banking on you guys to help me through it, as I'm afraid to even ask a pro what this would cost. Gulp.....and thanks for listening to my rant and rather long story.
:facepalm:
