MiltonKy7511
Recruit
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2012
- Messages
- 5
This is my first post here and this is my first inboard boat. It is a mercruiser 2.5L 120HP with Alpha outdrive. I just bought the boat and the only thing I did before I took it to the water was change the oil in the lower unit and replace the spark plugs. It runs fine and idles fine. From reading other posts, I think the idle rpm is correct at around 650? Hopefully this is normal. So here's the problem, it seems to shift fine on the trailer out of water which from reading seems to be a common thing. Other than having to move the lever back further than what I expect, it seems to shift into reverse ok. When I took it to the river, I put it into reverse to back it off the trailer it went into reverse ok, but when I tried to shift it back to neutral it was really hard to get it into neutral. I felt like I had to almost push it directly into forward to get it to finally shift and after a big "clunk" it finally did go into forward. It ran great in forward with no issues or misses which really impressed me, considering I had just bought the boat and wasn't sure what to expect. As long as I was in forward, the boat did well. It did seem like everytime I put it into neutral, that I had to move the handle back further than I should have to get it to shift into neutral. I also had the same problem everytime I put it into reverse. It was really hard to get into neutral again.
After reading several forums and articles I was convinced that it was the shift interrupt switch. I saw a few diagrams on a couple of the posts and thought that it had to be the switch and the little metal arm on the switch might need to be adjusted. A little more reading and I found that the original switch for this motor had been discontinued and there was a new switch. I went and looked at the motor and was surprised at what I found. None of the examples or pictures online were like what I had on my motor. I will post a couple of pics that I took of the switch on the next post. I don't see the metal arm (pardon my poor technical terminology for this part) that engages the switch on my shifting mechanism. I can manually push the switch and it kills the motor like what I expected, but I see nothing on my boat that engages this switch when I'm shifting. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
After reading several forums and articles I was convinced that it was the shift interrupt switch. I saw a few diagrams on a couple of the posts and thought that it had to be the switch and the little metal arm on the switch might need to be adjusted. A little more reading and I found that the original switch for this motor had been discontinued and there was a new switch. I went and looked at the motor and was surprised at what I found. None of the examples or pictures online were like what I had on my motor. I will post a couple of pics that I took of the switch on the next post. I don't see the metal arm (pardon my poor technical terminology for this part) that engages the switch on my shifting mechanism. I can manually push the switch and it kills the motor like what I expected, but I see nothing on my boat that engages this switch when I'm shifting. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
