Question about a Mallory ESA

I have a 88 Four Winns Horzion with 4.3 corba just bought about six weeks ago. The guy I bought it from had replaced the ESA with a Mallory. Now I'm having trouble going to go into forward and reverse, it shifts fine but engine stumbles and I have to work the shift lever and slowly and I mean slowly give throttle to get the engine to smooth out. One thing I think I need to do is adjust the shift cables because the switch actuating arm doesn't go back to neutral position when shifted into gear. The question of the Mallory ESA is it doesn't have the loop back wire in the connector going back to the overstroke switch. From what I have read it should have a timer to time out the interrupter switch, but I can close the switch by hand and the ESA never times out. Can I just change out the connector on the ESA to the old one a use the overstroke switch again? Any suggestions?

Re: Question about a Mallory ESA

The mallory module should work fine, it sounds like there is too much drag in the shift cable and/or linkage that won't allow the arm to center itself. You have to go through it piece by piece to find out where it is binding. When it is working properly you don't need the other switch or the timer, if you do use the other switch it is just postponing the inevitable...

Shawn

Re: Question about a Mallory ESA

Thanks skeat. Got my alignment tool in today, plan to pull off the lower unit and start setting all the cables bright and early Saturday morning