No reverse after adjusting cutout switch

[d010749]

Installed outdrive. Worked fine on trailer with ears. Put in water and cut-out switch needed to be adjusted, stalled in reverse. Adjusted cutout according to Merc. manual and lost reverse. I can't even get it into reverse with cable disconnected and pulling outdrive shift cable by hand. Forward and neutral are fine.

[onplane]

While on the trailer, hold brass barrel with one hand and pull cable end with other hand while a helper is rotating prop clockwise, this shoud lock into REV.
From your indication this is not working, so crawl below the drive and locate the brass shift lever and see if it is making contact with the side wall. If it is this will prevent it from fully engaging. Drop the lower half and make sure that you have it locked into FWD and engage the remote lever on the boat side into FWD and reinstall. Remember that being off by one spline can cause this. In addition, before you reinstall the lower, check the degrees of travel that the lower shifting splines rotate from FWD to REV. If it is about 50deg you shoud be ok, if it goes well beyond 50, this is where the trouble is.

Regards,
Scott

[d010749]

But I had reverse at first

The thing I don't understand, I had reverse until I adjusted the cut-out switch. I can pull the boat out of the water, but I have to use a tow truck to put it back in (steep ramp and 5500 pound boat). The rest of the people that had trouble with reverse didn't have it from the start. It worked perfect until I adjusted the switch. I will work on it tomorrow and let you know.

[onplane]

I know that this is a bad feeling and isn't sitting right. Maybe it was just on the "edge" of engaging and after things began to wear and seat it became out of tollerance. After the labor of getting it out of the water make sure you check the position of the brass shift lever in reverse to see if it is hitting the sidewall before any disassembly is started, this is a must and will be a big help. When you end up dropping the lower unit, also insure that you check the degrees of travel of the lower unit shifting splines, about 50 is ok, but well beyond is not good and could cause the brass shift lever to make contact with the sidewall of the drive preventing it from engaging. But hopefully it's the easy way out and during previous install, with the lower set up in FWD, quite possibly the prop shaft was inadverdently moved nocking it out of FWD causing it to get out of sinc, this does happen.

Good luck,
Scott