1994 caliante with I4 and yamaha sterndrive

Can anyone help me with this? I am at a loss with this thing I am a licensed automotive tech, but I can't figure out what is going on with my sterndrive. I can't shift it at all or sometimes with great difficulty between drive/ reverse or neutral. the frist year i bought it, it worked great. parked in the garage for the winter, could not get it off trailer in spring as would stall every time I went to reverse. made a shift cable adjustment and it worked. next spring same thing. Every year it is out of adjustment, wether I store it with the leg up or down, or go out in the middle of winter and rotate prop by hand and shift a few times or if I just leave it alone. This year I can't get it to work, had the drive off the gimble and checked cable which I have replaced in a previous year. cable moves ok. brass pivot on leg shifts fine with light pressure by hand, everything seems to move fine. if I bolt leg on wont shift, if I leave the leg with a 1/4 inch gap roughly from gimble. ( bolts not fully tightened) It will shift alot of the time like butter. But yet I can't physically see anything binding. Finding someone with lots of experience with yamaha has been a problem. lucky me.

Re: 1994 caliante with I4 and yamaha sterndrive

You may just need a new shift cable... they don't last forever and do wear out. That being said....

Your screwed on this one....

There's only 1 person in the states that can help you. Capt Ken. He pops in every now and then so maybe he'll see this thread.

Bondo has his contact info... if he sees this i'm sure he'll pass it along.

Re: 1994 caliante with I4 and yamaha sterndrive

Thanks for the advise. I managed to figure it out though today. The only thing that made any sense to me is it had to be something to do with corrosion as it is fine in fall, but does not work in spring. I removed the leg and checked shift rail was corroded, but moved allright. cleaned/ lubed and reassembled. Still did not work. removed leg and adjusted transom cable the way the manual told me to, reassembled still did not work. started to suspect shift coupler even though brass peice on leg moved by hand fine, found that if I pushed up on it, it would go stiff. seperated leg halves and removed brass coupler was corroded severly inside bushings, cleaned and inspected did not appear bent. After cleaning coupler and bushings, reassembled unit and retried. Now shifts like butter. woohoo time to sell lol.