Mercury 175 EFI will not shift....forward or nuetral

[jbhoyt09]

Hey guys....first post here. I have a 1999 Mercury 175 EFI. About a week ago, I determined that my water pump needed to be replaced. Called my boat dealer and it was going to be 3 weeks before they could get it done. So, with some help I found on this site, I decided to try it myself. The good news is that the process went fairly smooth. I put the shifter into forward, dropped the lower unit, replaced the pump, then slid the lower unit back in place. The bad news is that when I took it back to the lake today, the motor would not shift into forward or reverse, it just revved like it was in nuetral. I tried a couple of different times, then shut it down as I didn't want to do any damage.

What did I do wrong when re-installing the lower unit or what am I missing here? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

 

[diehardmason]

Re: Mercury 175 EFI will not shift....forward or nuetral

Hey guys....first post here. I have a 1999 Mercury 175 EFI. About a week ago, I determined that my water pump needed to be replaced. Called my boat dealer and it was going to be 3 weeks before they could get it done. So, with some help I found on this site, I decided to try it myself. The good news is that the process went fairly smooth. I put the shifter into forward, dropped the lower unit, replaced the pump, then slid the lower unit back in place. The bad news is that when I took it back to the lake today, the motor would not shift into forward or reverse, it just revved like it was in nuetral. I tried a couple of different times, then shut it down as I didn't want to do any damage.

What did I do wrong when re-installing the lower unit or what am I missing here? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

The lower unit is not in neutral when the shift is in neutral. I'm not a mechainic, but, did the same thing when changing my water pump. Search for some of the related posts for the solution. There are tons of them on here.

 

[CharlieB]

Re: Mercury 175 EFI will not shift....forward or nuetral

Common error, I/O' MUST BE in Forward to remove the outdrive so naturally people think the same for their outboards.

Not so, outboard gearcases use a cam to 'push' IN to shift to Neutral, and push in farther for Reverse, defaulting to Forward with no 'push' on the shift slide.

Drop the gearcase and rotate the shift shaft Counter-Clockwise, you should 'feel' two 'detents', the first is Neutral, second is Reverse. Either position will allow reassembly as long as the Control is in the matching position. It is most often an advantage to use Reverse as you a able to turn the prop/vertical shaft to align the splines easily.