This question is about a 1988 Johnson 20 HP tiller type outboard motor. <br /><br />The last time I was on the lake, when I got back to the boat ramp, I was running my boat in to shore. I hit the kill switch while the motor was still in Forward. Just as I got to the bank, the motor prop touched the bottom slightly. I don't know if either of those things make a difference, but I'm trying to include any possibility. When I tried to shift the handle on the starboard side of the engine that shifts the motor between Forward, Neutral, & Reverse, it would not shift. If I put enough pressure on the handle it would move very quickly from Forward to Reverse, but not to Neutral. When I got home, I took the cover off the motor & could see that a heavy metal rod, mounted vertically inside a spring on the starboard side of the motor was making contact with a metal plate on a large brass-colored ring that went about 3/4 of the way around the motor. I could see that if this metal rod did NOT hit the metal plate, it could stop in Neutral. On the port side of the motor, I found that this large brass-colored metal ring had a kind of elbow on it. A place where two pieces of metal met with a metal pin in the middle to make a kind of pivot point. I used a screwdriver to pull on that pivot point and when it hinged outward, the metal ring turned, & the metal plate moved enough that the rod could move up & the shift lever would then stop in Neutral. <br /><br />Does anyone have any suggestions as to what could have caused this to happen? Can you suggest what I need to do to keep it from happening again? I haven't started the motor since that time, but I know that in Forward the rope pull was locked up & now that it is in Neutral, the rope pull is no longer locked up. But I haven't started it, & I don't know if the motor would go back into Forward or not. <br /><br />Is this linkage, a broken part, lubrication, something that has gone wrong in the lower part of the motor? Any ideas?<br /><br />Tugaloo
