96 25hp mariner (mercury) pops out of gear at -low- speed

[Dougan]

It's a '96 mariner 25hp long shaft... but it's one of those mariners that's a rebranded 25hp mercury (made in fond du lac, and i use a mercury manual when i service it... same motor).

It runs just fine, stays in gear, but when i slow it down and kill it (either let it die, or use the killswitch, either way), once it's dead, I hear a "tic tic tic tic tic" as the boat moves. Eventually I realized that it is actually the motor popping into neutral, or at least far enough out of gear that it's rubbing against a gear or something. It's definitely fully out of gear though; if I use the trolling motor to move the boat, it will cause the "tic tic tic" to occur while it's in this state. I have to push the shifter fully into neutral to stop this behavior.

To date, it only happens when I kill the motor, and I've got some lengthy fishing trips done with it in the past couple months. Since it only happens when I kill the motor, and I have to shift it into neutral anyway before I start it, it presents absolutely no inconvenience for me as far as using the motor goes. But I'm still worried that something wrong is happening here. If I hit a stick or something while I'm planed out, I'm worried it's going to pop out of gear at WOT.

Is this normal for these engines? Really all I've done so far is to replace the gear lube to see if there were metal shavings and there were not.

Thanks in advance,
Scott

[windy5849]

The noise you hear is perfectly normal.When you turn off the engine in gear,the water pressure is trying to rotate the prop in reverse and making the clutch click as you describe.With the kill switch OFF,put the gear shift in forward and then try to spin the prop in reverse by hand - same noise you hear while on the water?Hope this helps.

[Dougan]

It is the same noise. I think your answer is correct. Thanks for easing my nerves on this!