mercruiser pre alpha drive-switch at top of tilt travel?

[woodrat]

So, I am in the middle of changing out my broken outdrive and transom plate. I will probably have lots of questions before I am done, but one that pops up right away is about the limit switch that is in the top of the gimbal ring. I assume that is to stop the tilt from going any higher. My old one was destroyed when the drive was broken and on both of the spare gimbal rings that i have the switch is either broken to pieces or the wires are frayed and broken off, too short to splice to.

how critical is this switch? Is it obtainable easily and at reasonable cost?