Mercury Force 75 Control Box or Shift Cable

[wcsd106]

Good morning and happy new year everyone.

Please forgive me at the moment as I'm operating off of only a few moments of observation until my buddy can get his boat over here and I can tear into it.

Here's what's going on... He has a 1999 Mercury Force 75 outboard. It has been running fine until a couple of weeks ago. Now it will not shift into forward from the control box. Reverse works fine from the box and it will pull. Out of reverse and back into neutral from the box. ZERO movement on the shift cable when going from neutral to forward.

Removing the cowling allows him to manually shift the linkage into forward without issue.

Almost has to be the control box, I would think. But I haven't had much time with that particular box.

I'll have him send pics of the box later today so I can update the thread.

He's bringing the boat over later this week. I'm hoping someone would give me a good place to start looking.

I also have a parts boat here with an older set of mercury controls that ran a Mercury 150 xr2. Would that box and cables directly swap if need be?

Thanks for the help.

[rhardwick]

Sounds like shift cable is broken from control box to engine. Disconnect the cable from the engine and see if you can pull the inner cable out.
Yes, the Merc control box for the XR2 and cables will work on the Force 75.

[wcsd106]

Thank you. I was hoping it was the cable and not something in the box or the box itself. What concerned me was it could push to go into reverse, but it would pull enough to pull it from reverse back into neutral.

Buddy texted me a little bit ago and said, if it helps, that when you manually put the motor into forward that the shifter sticks a little when pushing it back to neutral.

Think we are looking at a cable that has stretched prior to breaking?

[25two.stroke]

Most likely broken cable if it can push and not pull

[rhardwick]

Thank you. I was hoping it was the cable and not something in the box or the box itself. What concerned me was it could push to go into reverse, but it would pull enough to pull it from reverse back into neutral.

Buddy texted me a little bit ago and said, if it helps, that when you manually put the motor into forward that the shifter sticks a little when pushing it back to neutral.


Think we are looking at a cable that has stretched prior to breaking?

Reading this makes me think there is a control box issue or a shift cable that has split open under the deck. Need to pull the control box, remove the shift cable and see if you can see full movement on the control box when shifting. Also see if the shift cable will move freely when disconnected from the control box and engine.

[wcsd106]

Update. I took the cable loose this afternoon and it was indeed broken just up from the engine end.

Going to replace both cables with new in the spring, but had a used cable laying around with smooth movement. Threw it on there and got it shifting good again.

Thanks for the help.