My father and I need a little help. We have a Fourwinns H180 (2008) with the following Volvo Penta 3.0 GLP-J (3869388) Motor with a SX-A-2.18 (3883605) Stern Drive. We dropped in the water a few weeks ago and its been running well. About a week ago we went to go for a curse and we can not get it into gear after starting up (i.e. control was stuck in neutral). Below is approximated sequence of events.
Sequence of events:
-press the neutral release (neutral warm up button I think is its actual name) button to give then engine two or three pumps of gas
-return to neutral
-press the neutral release button to give it a bit of gas then start the engine leaving the throttle giving the engine a bit of extra gas
- allow the engine to warm up (revs around 1100rpm)
- move throttle back to neutral position (drops just below 1000rpm)
- cast off from dock
- went to put it in reverse gear box would not go into forward or reverse gear and the neutral button is now stuck
Troubleshooting to date:
Sequence of events:
-press the neutral release (neutral warm up button I think is its actual name) button to give then engine two or three pumps of gas
-return to neutral
-press the neutral release button to give it a bit of gas then start the engine leaving the throttle giving the engine a bit of extra gas
- allow the engine to warm up (revs around 1100rpm)
- move throttle back to neutral position (drops just below 1000rpm)
- cast off from dock
- went to put it in reverse gear box would not go into forward or reverse gear and the neutral button is now stuck
Troubleshooting to date:
- Removed throttle controller (volvo penta) and took apart. Nothing seemed broken or severely worn. Note we could not fully dismantle the controller and get a good look at the internal components. Put the controller back together and the controller functioned fine while held in the vise.
- Reinstalled controller on boat and followed sequence above and got the same result (when tried to put it into gear and controller neutral button stayed depressed).
- Next we disconnected the cable from the drive and the controller started working again (i.e. neutral release button popped out). We manually cycled the gear box and it seemed to function properly (i.e. we could move it between the reverse, neutral and forward detents). The controller would also cycle correctly when disconnected from drive.
- Followed the service manual procedure for reconnecting the cable to the drive unit. Cycled the gearbox using the controller (engine off) and everything work as expected (shifted in and out of gear or at least you could hear/feel the gear box when it reached the detents). Both the controller and the gearbox seems to have the same amount of travel moving from neutral to fwd, etc.
- Started up engine again (same sequence as above) and back to square one…