Mercury '88 TOP 115 lower unit reattached, geas not right..Probably simple..

[ianmoore]

Hello kind folks. I redid my water pump and impeller and reattached the lower unit. I followed the Merc service manual as much as i could.
It said to put the gears in forward when disassembling.
Before reassembling it said to shift the unit into Neutral. I couldn't figure out how to do this without the unit attached. i tried for a while and then decided to see if i could attach it as is(while in gear)
I carefully aligned the splines of the shifter while my friend gently shifted back from forward into neutral. I then pushed the driveshaft until it caught, while spinning the crank.
Everything seemed to line up and bolted without too much resistance. Once connected though I wasn't able to shift the motor into neutral.

My questions are..How do i shift into neutral when the unit if off?
DO i need to have it in neutral while reattaching the unit correctly?
Any obvious problems and/or solutions?

Thanks so much for your time.
Ian

 

[TD_Maker]

Some people like to reinstall the lower unit in Forward gear, and some people like neutral gear. Whatever gear you choose, you need to make sure your throttle is in the correct position needed for each gear. Then, if the lower unit is not in your chosen gear, then you must get a pair of pliers and rotated the shift splines until you feel the lower unit slip into your chosen gear. From there, lube the splines and bolt it up. may have to do a little adjusting where the cables meet the motor.

 

[ianmoore]

Thanks for the response.
So, if the lower unit is separate and it is in forward gear, you would twist the shift splines to the right to put it into neutral? I'm a little gun shy.
I tried for a while, but wasn't able to figure it out.
As it was, our mistake was shifting the throttle into neutral while the lower unit was in forward?
Thanks again
Ian

 

[Texasmark]

Look up in your mid section at the shift spline that attaches to the LU. Move your remote control from F to N. Watch which way the shaft turns. Turn your LU shift shaft the same direction. A pair of visegrips on the LU splined shaft is what I use. Not a lot of force like gut wrenching and all that, but you have a cam with cavities in it and a spring loaded bullet shaped cam follower on the prop shaft and it does take a little effort to move from one slot to the other against the resistance of the spring.

 

[ianmoore]

perfect. Thanks so much for the help.
Unit is back on and seems to work perfectly.
Now on to the tach. new tach. clean install. both wires, send and ground seem to be solid. It goes up to about 4000rpm and drops down to 0. I cleaned the terminals on the rectifier. I'll check the rectifier to see if the voltage is dropping at that same point. Thinking it might be going bad

 

[Chris1956]

The tach sender terminal is connected to one of the yellow wires on the rectifier, right?

 

[ianmoore]

yup. I'm about to go do a couple of tests on the rectifier to see if anything is wacky there