1994 Volvo 7.4 GL Stern Drive Shifts Hard into Neutral

[jmsmieja]

Hey everyone,

Here's another stumper I can't seem to find a good answer to. I have a 94 Chris Craft 268 with a VP 7.4GL stern drive setup, and it's very difficult to shift from reverse back into neutral. Forward to neutral seems to work okay, but reverse into neutral is very difficult and can cause me to overshoot into forward once it breaks free.

I thought it was possibly the shift cable, but I noticed that it's not hard to work the throttle lever when the engine isn't running. I'm not sure if that rules out the shift cable or not, but it seems like it would. I think the idle speed is a little too high, so I turned it down as far as I could and still keep the engine running, and it helps but doesn't eliminate the issue as much as I think it should.

Any thoughts? Anyone out there experience a similar issue?


Thanks,

Jameson

 

[skydiveD30571]

Re: 1994 Volvo 7.4 GL Stern Drive Shifts Hard into Neutral

Disconnect the cable from the drive and shift the drive manually. If it shifts easily you know it isn't the problem. Take the prop off or be extra careful around it when doing this. What's your idle rpm?

 

[jmsmieja]

Re: 1994 Volvo 7.4 GL Stern Drive Shifts Hard into Neutral

Thanks Skydive. I will try that. The boat is in the water and I dont own a trailer, and it sounds like cable connects to the drive behind the transom (I haven't looked yet). Is that correct? Hopefully I can still try that with it in the water.

I'm actually working on some idle issues right now. I thought the problem was that the idle was set way too high (1400 to 1700 at the tach) but I can't keep the boat running smoothly at anything below 1100. I've dumped a lot of time into the carb and other areas of the boat to fix that, and tonight I'll be putting a timing light on it to see if the tach is way of for some reason.

To answer your question, I'm not sure. Maybe 1100 rpm. The goal is to hit 750.

UPDATE: Used a timing light and set the idle to 750. The tach in the console still says 1400. I'll have to try shifting the drive by hand. Again, the throttle lever shifts easy when the boat is running, so I expect to find it difficult to do by hand.