Alpha One Gen Two Shift Lever Problems

hmmhunter

Recruit
Joined
Sep 17, 2017
Messages
2
Hello,
I've got a 2005 Bayliner 175 with a Mercruiser 3.0 MCM and SE116 (Identical to Alpha One Gen Two). I recently replaced the impeller and when doing so put the boat in forwards before dropping the lower unit, replaced the impeller, and reinstalled the lower unit. Afterwards I attempted to start the boat and it wouldn't even attempt to fire unless I started shifting from neutral into forwards. At this point I realized that the shift lever (the lever that comes straight out of the lower unit and turns at a 90 degree angle) was not aligned with the boot(?) on the upper unit and instead was off by a few degrees so it was just being forced down further into the lower unit. I used a flathead and was able to push the shift lever into alignment and it engaged perfectly.
I then lake tested the boat and it ran fine until the very end when it got stuck in reverse. After reversing back to the dock and pulling the boat I found that the shift lever had come out of alignment again. It appears that there is a lot of play and if I push the shift lever all the way down and pull the boot all the way up, there is just enough room that they could possibly disengage and come out of alignment. I pushed them back together and tried launching again, and this time I found that forwards and neutral work fine but reverse doesn't completely engage. If the boat is out of the water I can manually push the shift lever far enough to engage reverse but shifting the throttle into reverse doesn't seem to turn the lever far enough to engage reverse on the lower unit.
Is it possible that I bent or broke something when I reinstalled the lower unit without aligning the shift lever? Any ideas as to how it suddenly stopped being able to engage reverse even though reverse had worked fine at first after reinstalling the lower unit? Any help would be much appreciated!

Hunter
 
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