Hello to the forum! Stumbled on this great place as I was trying to understand what repairs might be needed to a boat my dad has had for a few years now.
It’s a 16 foot StarCraft Holiday and has been a great little boat to get around in the Puget Sound of Washington, drop crab pots, etc. I’d like to start using it for fishing now that I’ve moved here, but that’s a whole separate topic.
Last summer, we started having distinct issues with how smoothly it would shift into gear. It wouldn’t cleanly shift in without really shoving the single lever, dual action control far forward - with predictable results of gunning the motor. There has also been a longer running issue with the motors idle speed after being in forward gear at any real speed - when you shift into neutral the engine stays revved pretty high. Same issue coming into harbor, as the lowest speed the control unit would take you was still creating wake.
We got around the idle speed issue by shifting into neutral, lifting the black control lever and manually pushing the idle control on the motor backwards when we would come into harbor. When the shifting issue started to come up at the end of last season, we’d have one person at the motor to manually help force the motor into forward gear at the same time as the pilot was shifting the control into gear - this avoided grinding gears and allowed the motor to shift into forward gear without being revved super high.
I don’t have much experience with doing mechanic work on boats / outboard motors. I’ll very likely need to take it into a shop (although i like the idea of doing things myself if it’s something I can educate myself on), but I wanted to see what advice you veterans might have about likely diagnosis of these problems to help guide me. From what I’ve read online, I’m hoping perhaps this is an issue of needing to replace cables or perhaps needing to replace the lever control (both of which I assume/hope are much cheaper than actual engine problems). Any help or ideas are much appreciated!
I’ve also attached a couple photos for context.
It’s a 16 foot StarCraft Holiday and has been a great little boat to get around in the Puget Sound of Washington, drop crab pots, etc. I’d like to start using it for fishing now that I’ve moved here, but that’s a whole separate topic.
Last summer, we started having distinct issues with how smoothly it would shift into gear. It wouldn’t cleanly shift in without really shoving the single lever, dual action control far forward - with predictable results of gunning the motor. There has also been a longer running issue with the motors idle speed after being in forward gear at any real speed - when you shift into neutral the engine stays revved pretty high. Same issue coming into harbor, as the lowest speed the control unit would take you was still creating wake.
We got around the idle speed issue by shifting into neutral, lifting the black control lever and manually pushing the idle control on the motor backwards when we would come into harbor. When the shifting issue started to come up at the end of last season, we’d have one person at the motor to manually help force the motor into forward gear at the same time as the pilot was shifting the control into gear - this avoided grinding gears and allowed the motor to shift into forward gear without being revved super high.
I don’t have much experience with doing mechanic work on boats / outboard motors. I’ll very likely need to take it into a shop (although i like the idea of doing things myself if it’s something I can educate myself on), but I wanted to see what advice you veterans might have about likely diagnosis of these problems to help guide me. From what I’ve read online, I’m hoping perhaps this is an issue of needing to replace cables or perhaps needing to replace the lever control (both of which I assume/hope are much cheaper than actual engine problems). Any help or ideas are much appreciated!
I’ve also attached a couple photos for context.
