Force 85 stuck in reverse

[BoostedTimmy]

Went out for my maiden voyage the other day and was met with multiple failures :facepalm: Motor would cut out quickly doing 1/2 throttle or more then was hard to start again. Figured it was the fuel pump so started idling home (wasn't far). Things got worse to the point where the engine would only run for 5-10 seconds before dying and needing me to prime it again to get it started. This had me shifting back and forth quite a bit, putting it in neutral to start then into forward as quick as I could to get some thrust before it died again. My interlock switch was lined up like 90% right so usually in neutral it would start, but occasionally I had to throw it back into reverse then neutral to get it to work. Well at some point when I did that it went into reverse and decided to stay there :mad-new:

I replaced the fuel pump diaphragm...old one had visible defects and fell into pieces on removal. Runs great again. I was hoping with it running and some revs it would shift again but nope, still stuck. Unhooked the shift cable and tried to manually shift it with no luck...it has some play but will not budge towards neutral so definitely bound up somewhere. Assuming I don't find anything obvious where the upper shift shaft connects to the lower I will be dropping the whole lower again. Anything specific I should check for that would cause this besides the shaft binding somehow?

 

[BoostedTimmy]

I forgot I rigged the pin between upper and lower shift shaft because I lost the proper part. I bought the proper part but never actually installed it. My rigged part broke and stranded me. Don't make my mistakes.

 

[Jiggz]

Disconnect the upper from the lower shift rod. Then, manually shift the lower shift rod to see if it will shift. You do this before dropping the LU. You can tell if it shifts to neutral by manually turning the prop. If it will not shift in this manner, but the shift rod is actually moving up and down, drop the LU and open and inspect.

had the same problem before except it was stuck in forward. The cause was the lower shift rod got disconnected from the shift pivot mechanism.

 

[jerryjerry05]

So you say that the jury rig failed???

I think he said in post #2 he fixed it with the right parts