mercruiser bravo 1 454

I have a 2001 mercruiser stern driver w/a 7.4L the boat got hot this afternoon and my brother in law told me that it was probablly the impeller we replaced that and thought that we were good to go. but when we we went to start the boat it wouldn't come out of foward. we disconneted the cables and determined that the shifter was working properly because we could move into the neutral psition and bump the motor and it would turn over and the prop would spin as we did this but we could not get the lower unit to switch into neutral I have not had any problems until now is there something that could have been damaged in the lower unit when the boat over heated from the impeller going bad? could it be the shift interupter, becuase the boat shut down on its own when it got hot and it was in the forward gear? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Re: mercruiser bravo 1 454

When shut down in gear, they do tend to stick in gear. Best thing to do is crank the engine over while moving the lever back neutral. I know, impossible to do because of the neutral safety switch. You can also turn the prop by hand while moving the lever back to neutral, or you can hook up a remote start button to the slave solenoid to turn the engine. (a screw driver across the terminals would work also)

Re: mercruiser bravo 1 454

Bravos don't have shift interrupt switches. The impeller is not in the lower unit, so I don't see why anything would be damaged there.
Did you have the outdrive off the boat? If so, I know what your problem is. You'll have to remove the drive, pull the lower shift cable in the outdrive back out, making sure the "jaws" are open this time and reinstall the drive. I've done it twice on my Bravo drive, so it's not hard to make the mistake. It'll go into to forward gear, but you can't get it out.
If not, follow DonS' post.

Re: mercruiser bravo 1 454

try to shift to neutral from the engine . take the shifter control cable loose and make sure it will go into foward or reverse when shifted by hand. do this while running in water or on muffs. If it does not shift you have a problem in lower shift cable or in the upper unit. If itshifts in and out ok by hand you have trbl in the control cable or adjustment.