Too much throttle travel - Mercruiser

[jkust]

Hi all, I picked up a boat this spring that seems to have a sloppy mercruiser throttle. When shifting from neutral to forward it seems to get hung up each time instead of a smooth motion and then it seems to allow the throttle to travel past what would be a normal stopping point. Now suddenly the Bravo 1 is slightly clunking into gear when It was perfectly silent the first few times I used the boat. Wondering how to adjust the throttle and see if that corrects the clunking. The boat has 300 hours so a good bit of use on the throttle cable I suppose. It has a 350 MAG 5.7 MPI and a Bravo 1 drive. I've previously had a Mercruiser equipped boat and that throttle was very smooth and stopped letting you push it forward much sooner so that is my only comparison to what I feel is the correct amount of travel. Not sure what to check from here?

 

[alldodge]

Check your spacing between the shift cable and throttle cables on the shift plate. The lower cable should be secure and measure up from the center bolt on the bottom stud holding the cable to the upper stud, it should be 2 inches

 

[jkust]

Check your spacing between the shift cable and throttle cables on the shift plate. The lower cable should be secure and measure up from the center bolt on the bottom stud holding the cable to the upper stud, it should be 2 inches

Sorry to ask this but where is the shift plate?

 

[alldodge]

No problem, and glad you asked, I posted incorrect info. I knew what I wanted to say but must have gotten my toungue in front of my eye teeth and couldn't see what I was saying.

Measure from the bottom stud to the first cable and make sure its 3 inch (not 2) per pic below

 

[KnotConnected]

jkust, I'd like to share a brief (true) story with you that your situation reminds me of.

Once upon a time there was this 22-year-old kid that purchased a '94 Larson Cabrio 280. It was dirty and clearly had lacked care and attention for a while, but seemed to function fine, and with the marine surveyor's thumbs-up, the kid went ahead with the purchase. The first year he had the boat, much like yours, it had some issues with sloppy shifting. Sometimes it'd take some coaxing to get it into gear, sometimes it'd take some coaxing to get it out of gear, but with some caressing it seemed to get along just fine. The kid had the shift cable, shifter, etc looked at by a few professions, and the issue would seem to go away and come back with every mechanic that looked at it.

Fast forward to the 2nd year of ownership, the kid takes a nice ~45 mile trip north on his beloved boat for a long weekend in Door County. Upon arriving at the destination marina, he's passing nice, new, large and expensive yachts as he approaches his transient slip. When he goes to throttle down, however, the boat continues forward. He pops it into neutral, and the boat continues forward. He jiggles to forward and back to neutral a few times, but the boat continues in forward with a bit of haste as the dock (and stone / cement breaker wall, and yachts that cost more than he'll make in a lifetime) approach quickly. With trepidation, he throws the shifter between reverse and neutral and forward and reverse before abandoning the attempt to get it out of gear and killing the motor all together.

Luckily, all of his marina neighbors had made the trip North a few hours earlier and, despite being rather intoxicated, were able to line up along the dock and catch the 28 foot boat without any harm being done. After a tow to the boat yard, haul-out, and complete disassembly of the out-drive, they found massive corrosion of internal components, missing parts (some prior idiot had apparently tried to work on it), loose bolts, etc...

Moral of the story, if it's a new (to you) boat and has been doing this from day one, it might be worth tearing apart for a proper inspection.

 

[jkust]

jkust, I'd like to share a brief (true) story with you that your situation reminds me of.

Thanks for that. The bummer is that I took it to the Marina to do several things to it prior to splashing it for the year. It sits on my lift for the summer. They didn't catch this issue and since I hadn't driven it yet, neither did I. Would have been happy to have anything repaired prior to getting it wet for the year.