Omc Cobra shift problems---- 5.7 1988

[ab59]

Just when I thought I was done with this project I find that I still have a shifting problem. I replaced the engine and transom shift cable and used the OMC jigs to set the cable up so I know it's right. I adjusted the control cable according to Wolfs directions . I can shift into gear 9 both forward and reverse ) just fine but when I pull it back to neutral it does not come out of gear for about a minute and then returns to Neutral.
Anyone have an idea of what I'm doing wrong here ? and I have measured the throw between neutral , forward and reverse and it is 1 5/16" each way .

 

[Lou C]

Is this with the engine running on the water hose on land or in the water? If the not shifting to neutral is in the water, is your ESA working? Even with a new cable and proper adjustments, when running in the water your ESA must lower the idle from about 600 (spec is 500-600 in gear in the water) down to about 450 rpm to allow the clutch dog to release. If your idle is too high and the ESA does not work, this will happen.

Also, when you installed the new shift cable, did you clean out the pocket where the bellcrank is in the pivot housing? That should be filled with OMC/Evinrude grease and when you re-install the drive, the gasket should be coated on both sides with OMC gasket sealer to keep out water.

 

[ab59]

Hey Lou thanks for your response . I had the boat down at the ramp but still on the trailer with the boat floating when I was testing . My RPM's seemed to vary and once jumped to about 1500 briefly then settled down to about 800 , I figured it was the electronic choke closing and opening but like I said it settled down to about 800 . Would 800 be too high and cause a problem like this ? Slips right into gear just doesn't want to let go
When I replace the shift cable at transom I did clean everything out real good and before I closed it up I did fill that pocket full of grease . As far as the gasket I had gasket sealer on both sides of it and everywhere else for that matter but I don't know how good it would work on a greasy surface that seemed to be impossible to get all of the grease off of.
I will re set the idle and test again .

Thanks again , I will post again after my adjustments -----

 

[Lou C]

Your idle is way too high. Hook up a good tach to the ignition coil and go by that, 500-600 in the water in gear on land you can set it at 600. Trigger the ESA lever and it should drop to 450 or so your engine has to be in good enough tune to run that slow at least for a few seconds. If it doesn't work this way it will not shift to neutral.

PS you have an electric choke? I'm guessing that you changed the carb then because the OE carbs on these were Rochester Quadrajets with the divorced choke coil mounted on the intake manifold. Boat carbs do not have fast idle cams like old cars with carbs had. Do you perhaps have an auto carb on there? Holley? post up a pic...

 

[ab59]

Lou it's a Holley 4010 crackerbox Marine carburetor that everyone seems to hate but it is a marine carb with the return tube on top. after breakfast I'm heading out and adjusting the idle , hopefully you have found my problem.
will post in a while----
thanks--

 

[Lou C]

OK, just get the idle down and check your ESA function.

 

[ab59]

I went down and bought a meter to check the RPMs and I came up with about 800rpm at no load on the muffs. Oddly though when I shifted into forward gear and then back to Neutral it came out of gear with no problems but the RPMs were way up . I shut the engine down and restarted and the problem went away .
Shifting at no load into both forward and reverse gears I can shift into gear and back to neutral with no problems . I am going to pull the throttle cable and work the shift lever and see if i can trace this sticking problem down .. Don't really know if its the carburetor or the throttle cable causing the problem yet .
thanks-----

 

[Lou C]

Make sure that your throttle control does not start advancing the throttle until the drive is shifted into gear. The way it should work, the throttle/shift control shifts into gear and then the throttle advances. Try disconnecting the throttle cable and adjusting the idle speed screw on the carb lever. Then try shifting it in and out of gear. At 600 rpm it should shift with 2 fingers.

 

[Bondo]

Try disconnecting the throttle cable and adjusting the idle speed screw on the carb lever.

Ayuh,..... 'n when ya do this, ^^^ Make Sure when ya put the throttle cable back on, it's in tension, pushin' the lever solidly against the idle adjustment screw,......

 

[ab59]

Well , I set the idle at 600 rpm and then I reset the throttle . A little better but still does not want to come out of gear when in the water, on the muffs it shifts in and out of gear just fine . The following pictures are the positions of the detent in Neutral then WOT in Forward, then WOT in Reverse , followed by a picture of my throttle setup .



I am re reading the Wolf's articles but find it difficult to keep their directions straight but so far I have not come across anything that seems to be wrong with my installation. But there is Something wrong I just don't understand what just yet.

 

[ab59]

I have figured out why the Wolf Marine instructions are so confusing. They are upside down and backwards from my application and are tedious at best. Is there any other good sources of information one this procedure that have clear pictures of drawings that anyone knows about ?
I just tried to loosen and move the end of the shift cable where slotted , to a different position in the slot as instructed by the wolf directions to get the detent to line up with the V and it did not move the detent at all .
Sounded simple as the directions describe my exact problem and how to remedy same but the detent did not move at all and I don't really understand how moving the control shift cable could change anything with the transom cable still connected to the bracket since it will not allow the bracket to move and line up the detent.
I dunno.

 

[ab59]

Looking back at my original installation of the shift cables from the Neutral Position , I found that after I had connected the Control Shift Cable that the Lower ie transom shift cable did not line up with the post on the bracket and I had to adjust the Control shift cable to make the post line up for the transom shift cable and that is most likely where my problem came from as before I changed the transom shift cable the outdrive had shifted fine and seems like I should not have adjusted the upper that much by the " trunnion " adjustment and should have adjusted the anchor instead and then fine tuned with the trunnion adjustment . I believe by making the adjustment in full ( moved the lower post by an inch or so ) by the Control cable Trunnion that it pulled the detent out of alignment .Would this be a valid evaluation ?
thanks-- A.B.

 

[Lou C]

Yeah I know its confusing...
here's what I can say about yours...Look at the position of the load lever (the lever that the trunnion for the transom shift cable fits into). When in Neutral, it should be as you have it with the ESA trigger lever centered in the middle. What is supposed to happen is when you shift it to FWD, or REV, the load lever flexes a bit but then it re-centers with the ESA lever in the middle still. The only time it should have the points on the load lever activating the ESA lever is when you shift from FWD to N or REV to N on the water with a load on the prop. You have to adjust the transom shift cable separately from the remote cable that comes from the remote control. Once you adjust that (using the 2 tools, the one that holds the bell crank at 90* and the one that sets the length of the trunnion adjustment on the cable up on the engine bracket) you leave it be, do not adjust that to compensate for mis adjustment with the remote cable. Have you tried to lift up the ESA trigger lever with the engine running in Neutral? the idle should drop down to about 450 then, and as soon as you release that lever it should recover back up to 600. If this does not work, you will not be able to shift to Neutral on the water. I think you need to make sure the ESA works, and go back and re-check your adjustments.

The reason why the remote cable adjustment is important is this: Look at the bellcrank on the engine bracket, how far it moves in each direction (ie to shift to FWD, and REV) is determined by the adjustment of that cable. If the cable is too low in that slot there will not be enough travel to engage each gear.

Sorry my boat is still covered up from winter, will be uncovering it within the next week and will check mine to compare....

 

[ab59]

Thanks Lou , I'll send you some of the Northern California 90* weather we are having rite now . Dang and its just April .
I took everything apart again and ignored the pictures upon re assembly of the shift cables. Believe it or not I got everything to line up right , forward , neutral , and reverse with the detent centering in the middle of the V on each position. I took the boat down to the ramp and once again , floated the boat started the engine , reset the idle speed again to about 600 . After a couple of minutes of warm up I shifted into Forward gear and back to Neutral and it came out of gear just like it should . I then shifted into Reverse and back to Neutral and it shifted out of gear like it should.
After doing this several times and checking the detent position as I shifted it began hanging in gear again and the detent NOT centered into the V for NO apparent reason . The one time it will work as it should and sometimes it reverts back to the detent hanging onto the top of the point.
I am done for the day , better quit before I get really frustrated . I'm close to figuring it out . I will go out tomorrow and trigger the detent and see if I can hear the engine slow .

thanks----A.B------

 

[ab59]

A new wrinkle . During my research tonight a came across an article that brought up a valid question. I have a 1988 5.7 / Omc Cobra sterndrive. I do not believe it came out with an electric ignition. It now has what I think is a petronix conversion kit in the distributor . It no longer has points. What type of ESA Should now be on the system and could that be my problem ???
thanks---A.B.

ps-- I went out and started the engine and lifted the detent from the V and got no variance of the rpms from the engine. More testing tomorrow but curious about the type of ESA that should be on this system and what part number it might be.

thanks again---

 

[ab59]

I found a little clarity in this youtube video although there is some argument about which switch is called what , it is very informative and clarifies a lot of information.
just thought someone else might benifit from it as well---

https://youtu.be/whGSfsGHEao

 

[Lou C]

I found a little clarity in this youtube video although there is some argument about which switch is called what , it is very informative and clarifies a lot of information.
just thought someone else might benifit from it as well---

https://youtu.be/whGSfsGHEao

I'm Luigi1955 in the comments. He was wrong. The one with the lever is the interrupt the one without is the overstroke switch.

BTW, if you do not have any drop in idle when you actuate the interrupt switch lever that is your problem. It will shift out of gear on the water hose without that working because there is no load from the water on the prop. In the water you MUST have the ESA working for it to shift from in-gear to neutral.

If you have the Pertonix instead of the OE points distributor (Prestolite) that could be your problem, there was a diode fix that Pertronix had on their site that was necessary to wire in, for the ESA to work with the Petronix conversion. Your OE ESA module is programmed to work with points, only. Now it may be possible to get an aftermarket ESA module that will work with the Pertronix, you can try calling tech support at CDI electronics in Alabama, they make OMC ESAs and might be able to advice you. The other possibility is that your ESA module died, I had this happen when the boat was about 26 years old or so. I could not get the OE one any longer (NLA) and got one from CDI that worked perfect and still does (changed it like 4 years ago). So you have to do some snooping around, is their any non-OE wiring hooked up to your ESA?

I kept my points distributor partially for this reason, partly because I grew up with cars with points and understand them and can fix them easily. I don't like aftermarket electronic ignition because if you can't find the mystery module that runs it you are SOL. I can pop in a set of points in about a half hr max.

Sooo….do a search on the Petronix OMC diode fix....see if that's what you have in the wiring,....if not....then try to put it together....and see if that makes your ESA work....if it does....great....if not....call CDI and see what they suggest, I can tell you that the OE ESA modules are NLA...…

One other option....is to wire the interrupt circuit like a Merc Alpha....less sophisticated than the OMC system because it nearly stalls the engine when shifting, but if the shift cable is working smoothly and the engine is in good tune, it works OK. The OMC system was better in that, it would not stall the engine.....just lowers it enough to get it to shift. There are also instructions out there to wire the OMC like a Merc, but I'd try to keep the OMC system working as designed, because it was better for sure.

 

[Lou C]

http://support.pertronix.com/file.p...ture=66fe1e3f479eabcc2ac6390ebdf3b929b280d555

found it, this is what you need to do, if your boat is not set up this way.

 

[ab59]

Is this correct ? a video of my work from youtube . this thing seems to do something different from one day to another. the shift plate with the V and lobes was not moving yesterday when I shifted but today seems to move just fine. I worked the shift bracket by hand , not by just lifting the detent and the engine does not stumble or slow. I am in the process of testing for power and checking grounds . Hard for me to believe that the switch is bad when it worked just fine before I changed the shift cable but stranger things have happened.

https://youtu.be/HZPnqqHwdkE

 

[Lou C]

Ok looked at your vid, and uncovered the boat today. Mine shifts in to both FWD, and REV without the load lever (what you called the V lever with the lobes) even moving at all. I took some pix and will post them up when they come through on the cloud. I think something is causing your transom shift cable to drag and that's why the load lever is moving. Only time that should move, and in turn trip the ESA is when you are shifting out of gear on the water with a load on the prop.