Redrig
Master Chief Petty Officer
- Joined
- Oct 13, 2009
- Messages
- 849
Hello all ,
I wanted to post up what I have been working on for the last year and a half or so in hopes of matbe helping out someone down the road .
My boat was born a 77 OMC with an electric shift drive . It has worked OK for me over the years but I have broken a couple of forward shift slinkys in the lower unit which has ruined my vacation, completely out of the blue with no warning.
A gent on here Boomyal way back in the day completed a electric to hydromechanical swap. So over the past few years I have been on the lookout for a nice mechanical 800 that I could swap onto my boat and get rid of the electric shift , not knocking the electric shift - I still see alot of those out there so they must be OK , I just want something that I am a little more confident in and like the concept of a mechanical shifting device .
Your boat HAS to have a short profile electric to do this , its my understanding a tall profile 800 was never made.
You do have to get close to your drive ratio's though. My engine is a ford 302 and the donor was a chevy 350. My electric shift overall ratio was 1.39 and the new drive is 1.41 . So very close ratio wise , dang near identical.
last summer I found a nice unit on a boat that was being parted out so I grabbed everything needed , the drive , converter and controls , even the intermediate shaft and ball gear. (my old electric shift used the mechanical push pull steering ) I converted to tru-course steering during this swap as well but that was from a different donor boat.
pretty straight forward , you need all of that "stuff" from a donor boat. What you do is drill the shift cable hole in the intermediate out to allow for the larger shift cable , I used a 17/32 bit in the end but worked my way up to that size.
Ideally you swap in the correct intermediate which has a boss for the shift cable retainer. My electric shift intermediate doesnt have that of course.
Below is a pic using my spare shift cable that I got with the outdrive to ensure a nice good tight fit.
Completed the process of dialing in the over-stroke switch and nominal neutral adjustments. (the marks on the converter)
I had the boat out over the July 4th holiday and she did great , there were no problems at all - she shifted and ran great , probably put about 10 hours on her .
One thing that did take a little getting used to , is the speed of the shift. Back with my electric shift I would make the shift as slowly as possible to make sure the shift would happen at lowest RPM possible .
With this mechanical you kinda have to make the shift swiftly so you dont kill the engine via the ESA , I killed the engine a couple times cuz of that but no biggie.
so thats about it.
I know that its still a stringer and they have a bad rep overall but I love my boat and she is not rotten and as I mentioned earlier I have much more confidence with a mechanical shift dog clutch style unit . Where I boat it is not uncommon for me to end up 50 miles away from a marina.
I wanted to post up what I have been working on for the last year and a half or so in hopes of matbe helping out someone down the road .
My boat was born a 77 OMC with an electric shift drive . It has worked OK for me over the years but I have broken a couple of forward shift slinkys in the lower unit which has ruined my vacation, completely out of the blue with no warning.
A gent on here Boomyal way back in the day completed a electric to hydromechanical swap. So over the past few years I have been on the lookout for a nice mechanical 800 that I could swap onto my boat and get rid of the electric shift , not knocking the electric shift - I still see alot of those out there so they must be OK , I just want something that I am a little more confident in and like the concept of a mechanical shifting device .
Your boat HAS to have a short profile electric to do this , its my understanding a tall profile 800 was never made.
You do have to get close to your drive ratio's though. My engine is a ford 302 and the donor was a chevy 350. My electric shift overall ratio was 1.39 and the new drive is 1.41 . So very close ratio wise , dang near identical.
last summer I found a nice unit on a boat that was being parted out so I grabbed everything needed , the drive , converter and controls , even the intermediate shaft and ball gear. (my old electric shift used the mechanical push pull steering ) I converted to tru-course steering during this swap as well but that was from a different donor boat.
pretty straight forward , you need all of that "stuff" from a donor boat. What you do is drill the shift cable hole in the intermediate out to allow for the larger shift cable , I used a 17/32 bit in the end but worked my way up to that size.
Ideally you swap in the correct intermediate which has a boss for the shift cable retainer. My electric shift intermediate doesnt have that of course.
Below is a pic using my spare shift cable that I got with the outdrive to ensure a nice good tight fit.
Completed the process of dialing in the over-stroke switch and nominal neutral adjustments. (the marks on the converter)
I had the boat out over the July 4th holiday and she did great , there were no problems at all - she shifted and ran great , probably put about 10 hours on her .
One thing that did take a little getting used to , is the speed of the shift. Back with my electric shift I would make the shift as slowly as possible to make sure the shift would happen at lowest RPM possible .
With this mechanical you kinda have to make the shift swiftly so you dont kill the engine via the ESA , I killed the engine a couple times cuz of that but no biggie.
so thats about it.
I know that its still a stringer and they have a bad rep overall but I love my boat and she is not rotten and as I mentioned earlier I have much more confidence with a mechanical shift dog clutch style unit . Where I boat it is not uncommon for me to end up 50 miles away from a marina.
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