Shifting Problem After Wide Open Throttle One Motor Only

[Rob Armstrong]

Hi All,
Strange problem that just popped up this season......First a little back story.
2000 SeaRay 290 Sundancer, twin 350 Mercs with Bravo 2s. Both motors removed for the winter for rebuilding....everything is pretty much new....rebuilt both drives, new shift/throttle cables etc. etc. Everything seems to work like it should.....but the starboard throttle/shifter lever will NOT return to neutral only after running at just about WOT. At slow speeds, everything shifts just like it should both drives....after running up on plane and pretty close to WOT, the stbd shifter will throttle down but will not pop into neutral. The first time it happened a couple weeks ago, it popped into neutral all of a sudden but then wouldn't throttle up. Limped back to the dock and looked in the hatch and the top shifter cable in the bracket was humped up like I had forced it so I thought that was the problem, straightened it out and it worked fine. Last weekend when pulling into the mooring field, same thing, wouldn't go into neutral so we opened the hatch with engines running expecting to see it humped up again but it wasn't. We fiddled with it with engines running as I worked the shfter and my son worked the linkage and after about 5-10 minutes it just went into neutral and worked fine the rest of the day. Has anyone ever come across symptoms like this before? We did try raising and lowering drives while working the shifter, no dice and we tried steering side to side to see if maybe there was a cable binding and still nothing.....so I can't really say what made it pop back in.....
I don't want to haul it already if I can help it and of course I can't really make it act up at the dock...if I could I would disconnect the cables one at a time to try and isolate the problem....which I don't want to do just floating around in the harbor.
Any insight/ideas would be awesome to start me in the right direction.
Thank you,
Rob

 

[Thornton69]

Have had a similar problem with our Bravo the last couple outings. Dual controls though. No problem with shifting at lower rpms but it would lock in forward after longer runs. Had to fight with the shift bracket in the engine room at idle to get it back to neutral. I opened the upper drive and had found one of the springs badly warn and appeared to be getting pinched in the clutch (shift collar). Still waiting for parts to correct and confirm.
Rechecking your linkage adjustments should be the first step you do. Especially if it is a new problem since the engines were removed.

 

[Rob Armstrong]

Great info, thank you Thornton69. I will re-adjust the linkages first since I don't need to haul it to do so.