fmanerchia
Seaman Apprentice
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2005
- Messages
- 30
Hi all,<br /> I've just spent all weekend putting a different LU on a 85ESL73M. Here's the weird part, when we had it on land with ears, it would idle, spin one way when the throttle was pushed forward, and the other way when the throttle was pulled back. We cheered and launched it at the local slip. Once in the water, we had no reverse. We tried to putt-putt back to our dock and lost forward. My brother was able to remove the bellcrank and limp us to dock. Something changed from when we were testing it on land, but we don't have a clue.<br /><br /> In trying to make adjustments, the shifter suddenly lost all resistance or ability to shift. After taking the remote control apart, we discovered that the shift cable had come out of the trunion that was attached to the shift lever (which I had replaced at the end of last season.) We put it back in with a bit hanging out of the front (past the Allen screw.) After this, we could adjust the cable/shift rod connector to get either forward or reverse, but not both. We removed the LU and compared rod lengths with the old one (because we thought that one rod may be longer than the other. <br /><br /> My questions are: 1) Is it possible in any way that the cabling issue (becoming disconnected and possible reconnected incorrectly) had something to do with only being able to get one gear at a time, and when you insert a cable into a trunion, are you supposed to pull out the slack or do anything special? 2) What is supposed to be the position of the shift rod connector? If it's screwed too high on the shift rod, the shift rod lever to the bellcrank will be too far apart to connect the linkage. 3) Why can't we get both gears in the water like we did on land with the ears? 4) Would it be possible to fix this by loosening the cable from the remote control trunion, or is it vital that the connector on top of the shift rod be at some precise measurement?<br />Thanks in advance,<br /> Frank <br /><br /> One good thing that came from this is that when we pulled the replacement LU off to examine the shift rod length, we discovered that the O-ring under the shift rod was leaking and letting water into the oil, so we were able to repair that before it did any damage.