67 Mercruiser Shift Cable

[keith204]

I'm pretty sure my lower shift cable in my 67 Mercruiser 6cyl is messed up. Does anyone have experiences with shift cables?

Here's what my boat is doing:

Idling in neutral: great
Idling in forward: great
Idling in reverse: great
Giving it gas, in neutral (push or pull): great
Giving it gas, while forward: great
Giving it gas, while in reverse: STALLED

When in reverse, if I try to give the engine more gas than an idle, it is tough to push the the throttle back. At this point, it seems as if the boat is simply 'turned off'. The reverse idle is fine for pulling the boat off the trailer...but isn't adequate when needing to slow down to keep from running into a dock.

 

[keith204]

Re: 67 Mercruiser Shift Cable

I found the problem. There is a cutoff switch where the upper and lower shift cables meet. This is there to prevent somebody from going backwards in full speed. It was simply misadjusted, and cut the engine off as soon as you hit the gas in reverse. So, we adjusted the threaded adjuster, so the cutoff switch wouldn't be triggered quite yet, and it works great!