Shift/Throttle Cable Adjustment 1994 25HP Mariner

Hey guys,

Newbie, first boat, everything used from the craigslist. Bought this motor with controls off of a boat that they had wrecked. The motor had a bent prop shaft. Bought a used lower unit and put it on. Forward is great, reverse is killing me.

It gradually started grinding reverse worse and worse after 3-5 uses of the reverse. Adjusted the cable without any luck until reverse just completely stopped working. It appeared the used lower unit shift linkage was a little shorter than the original (or maybe not). Moved all of the gears back over to the original lower unit and have the exact same issue.

Reverse locks in when I disconnect the cable but the cable falls half and inch short of pushing it far enough.
Attached are pics.

Will new cables fix this, or is there some other issue??

Re: Shift/Throttle Cable Adjustment 1994 25HP Mariner

Not being there I can,t see the rest are you sure this is the shifter cable and not the throttle cable first of all? The shifter cable will move before the throttle cable. Otherwise I can,t see any other option except get another cable thats longer. You mat have to bring yours and match it against another cable. Maybe someone eles has info on this though. The older cables had an adjustment screw (SQUARE HEAD) on the plastic end that you could losen and tighten to make the cable adjust where you wanted it Maybe that might be of some help

Re: Shift/Throttle Cable Adjustment 1994 25HP Mariner

Is there a coupling nut between the lower and upper shift shaft (that you would have to disconnect to drop the lower unit)? On mine, a much older (1982) Mariner there is about 1 inch of adjustment at this location. Maybe that would make up the difference?

Mine has detents in the shift lever on the side of the motor for F-N-R, which I assume is pretty standard. What happens if you remove the LU and then put the shift lever at the side of the motor in neutral and the control handle in neutral? If the cable end lines up, then it would appear that the problem is in the shift shaft, as noted above. If it doesn't, I'd look at the cable - maybe it's the wrong cable.

Re: Shift/Throttle Cable Adjustment 1994 25HP Mariner

Some midsections do have a nut that must be loosened to remove the lower unit but I thought that was on a bigger engine. If you manually shift the unit into fowards it wil ratchet in one direction and lock in the other. In neutral it will spin freely in bothy directions and in reverse it will lock in both directions If this is what you have then it should be properly installed. Even if it does have the nut to seperate there should be enough play in the spline connection to accomidate the distance nessecary to get it the rest of the way up. Not for your engine but the basics of the LU are in here Mabybe you want to veiw it. I made it for another poster. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DL4Zkd5MLQ&feature=youtu.be

Re: Shift/Throttle Cable Adjustment 1994 25HP Mariner

It does not have an adjustment nut. The shift shaft parallels the drive shaft from top to bottom and pins at a lever by the motor.

I switched the cables and readjusted and tinkered with some stuff and got it to feel engaged by hand. It locks both directions but I took it down to the ramp and still no reverse.
I was trying to avoid taking the gears out again, but if I do, what am I looking for?

Re: Shift/Throttle Cable Adjustment 1994 25HP Mariner

No it is not locked in. If I turn it hard with my hand, it still will spin.

Re: Shift/Throttle Cable Adjustment 1994 25HP Mariner

OK, your's is obviously different than mine in the shift shaft configuration.

What happens if you disconnect the shift shaft and place the gear lever and control handle in Forward? Will the cable end line up then?

Re: Shift/Throttle Cable Adjustment 1994 25HP Mariner

if in reverse it does not lock in both directions you will have to take the unit back down and reset the sifter for drive and the LU in drive. I have herd of this problem with these smaller engines the shifter arm moves when trying to get it up. That is probably what happened to you. In Forwrd the lever won,t have anywhere to go when the engine is on a tilt angle. Give it a shot

Re: Shift/Throttle Cable Adjustment 1994 25HP Mariner

Thanks guys,

I have been going through it over and over, and it appears that everything has worn and has a lot of slop in it. This includes cables, linkage connection points, etc.. Just the benefits of a 1994 motor I guess. Before I start throwing parts at it, I decided on one little hail-mary.

So, what I found was that forward had plenty of travel, but only reverse did not. So, on the large arm that the 2 pieces of linkage connect to, I relocated the conncection point back about 1/4". Readjusted both cables so that now they are not maxed out and took it to the ramp and it worked just fine.

Attached is a pic of what I did. Would still like to know exactly what was wrong, but I will take this for now.

Thanks for reading and responding. Hopefully someone else will find this thread helpful on down the road.

Bo

Re: Shift/Throttle Cable Adjustment 1994 25HP Mariner

Thats some fancy reman you did Hope it works well for you.