Idle and Full Throttle are reversed

Hello, and thanks for taking my post. For the past three months a friend of mine and I have been rebuilding the outboard motor on my 16 ft boat. The outboard is a 1989 Evinrude 110 with a 20 inch shaft. We had lost compression in one cylinder about 4 years ago but due to the economy we didn't have the money to fix it at the time. The boat sat idle until this past December when we started working on it. During that time, the engine built up a lot of corrosion in the powerhead and we wound up replacing one piston, the exhaust housing and quite a few other parts over the past few months. The motor starts and runs wonderfully now, but we can't seem to get the throttle connected properly.

The throttle box is not the original that came with the motor, hence there are no specs/diagrams that we have to work with, but there seems to be only one way to assemble it. The same is true at the engine, there seems to be only one way to assemble the components. We have used the engine schematics available at your website and everything seems to be connected properly. The problem we are experiencing is that when the control arm is in the neutral, verticle position, the engine is at full throttle. When we move the control arm full forward (what should be full throttle in forward gear) and full back (full throttle in reverse) the engine goes to idle at either extreme. We had to adjust the handle assembly so that it was centered on the spline, and it seems to be correct. We have tried everything we can think of, including trading the throttle and gearshift cables, but nothing seems to help. In the idle position, the engine is at full throttle; at the full throttle position (either forward or reverse) the engine is at idle. We must be missing a basic step of some kind...

I have no experience with outboard motor repair but the gentleman I am working with has been around them for 30 years and has taken his share of them apart. He has never encountered this problem before. I'm thinking it's probably something obvious and simple but we can't see it. Any help someone could offer would be greatly appreciated.

By the way...there is an high pitched alarm at the ignition switch that won't go off either. In the past it would sound at startup and then go off after a few seconds. Don't think it's for high temp, as I have a good tell tale coming out of the motor...thanks!!

On most control boxes it is the shift cable that moves first.---------So remove both cables , find the one that moves first and install it for shift.--Adjust cables properly after that,--Sounds like the buzzer itself is defective.

Thank you for the information. I will try that as soon as possible and get back to you.

A few pics of the box and cable attachment on engine might help to get you on the right path.

Thanks to those members that gave me input...I wanted to advise you all that I appreciated the helpful comments that were submitted, but I realized that I did not have the technical knowledge to answer the questions you were probably going to ask, so I wound up taking the boat and motor to a local mechanic. The linkages at the motor end of the throttle cables were not correct (the pics you asked for probably would have shown that), so that problem has now been corrected, but in addition, the motor also needed a replacement powerpack. Hopefully when that is installed and everything tested out in the water, nothing else will be required and we will be good to go.

Rather than leave you all high and dry, I thought it best to give an update. Thanks again for all your gracious assistance...and I wish you lots of beatiful days out on the water!

Thank you for reporting back.