1974 Mercury 65 HP Stuck in Drive

alaskanfisher86

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Joined
Aug 10, 2010
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2
I have a 1974 Mercury 65 HP outboard I got from a guy, the first time i took it out on the water it shifted kind of hard, didnt think much of it thought maybe the controls were backwards, so i looked and they werent.

The second Time I took it out everything was good, was shifting hard but still shifting, about an hour in It got really hard to shift" Especially when I had to bring it in on the trailer, anyways I shifted forward and it was so frickin tough that in order to get it out I had to damn near pull a muscle, I then tried to shift backwards and it did but now it was so stuck i couldnt get it out and i was drifting backwards quickly. I shut it off and attempted to put it in neutral, after a second it finally went to neutral.

So i take it home thinking the cables were bad, I took the shift cables off and attempted to hand shift it, "throughout this the prop is spinning quick, with the throttle". I shifted it at the top by hand and nothing, its still spinning as if its in gear still. Im going to take the lower end off to check, but at this point im not sure.


What sucks is this is my family vacation/fishing boat for my wife and I before I deploy, what integrity some people have.
 

alaskanfisher86

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Joined
Aug 10, 2010
Messages
2
Re: 1974 Mercury 65 HP Stuck in Drive

So i took the lower end off this morning, it came off easy, the prop turns with the big rod easy back and forth with no problem. to be completely honest I didnt know what to look for.

I took the control box apart and to my dismay there were so many parts apart inside it that were sheared, little peices of metal fell out letting me know that the control box is more or less shot. But that still doesnt effect the fact that i still couldnt manually shift in out of drive or whatnot.

PLEASE HELP!!
 
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