87 fourwinns shift points and throttle dont match

Hello All
I am new to inboards but not new to boats
So here is my question i have a 87 fourwinns 170 horizan and it has a 4.3 L with the cobra out drive. I need to know how to adjust cables for throttle and when it drops into gear. right now i can not find a happy medium. when i go to put it into forward gear it revs up to 2000 rpms before it starts to go into gear and then slam. at this point it will just slide into revers. if i try to adjust it i can get the forward to drop in nice but then revers revs up to high to put into gear. so i can not get happy medium. also when i got the boat the guy told me he had the carb rebuilt now i can not get the idle to drop back to the same spot everytime i noticed that cable has like 1/8 play please advise thank you

Ayuh,... My guess is, ya need a new lower shift cable, yer's has to much travel, because of internal wear...

would that be the red cable that runs from motor by the carb that the shift cable from the lever goes to. also didnt have this problem until throttle cable messed up

http://www.hastings.org/~stuart/cobra/

some good reading