1989 Force 125 won't start unless manually holding throttle

I have a force 1989 Force 125 Inboard/Ouboard.


It will only start or idle if I manually move the throttle by a very small amount.


Such a small amount in fact, that if I shove a playing card in the space between the Cam Throttle and the screw at the end of the linkage, it will start and stay running.


Sorry for the poor description. I hope I'm using the correct terms I have attached a picture with the area circled in yellow.


When I have the throttle open a little, it starts immediately, without any issues and sounds great.


I can actually manually rev the throttle and it still sounds good, I just cannot get it to start as is.


It is worth metioning that it has sat in storage for 4-5 years without starting, and ran fine when it was put away.


All the old gas evaporated, so I'm wondering if a good place to start is cleaning the carbs?


Any advice would be highly appreciated.


Thanks,

Can I throw one more variable in there?

I have been playing around with it today, and I realized that the tower shaft does not move at all when working the shift lever, which is probably part of the issue. Even though I was giving it a little throttle at startup, it was not transferring that through to the linkage.

I disconnected the throttle cable, and the cable is definitely moving freely when shifting, so the cable is not the issue. However, I cannot move the tower shaft at all by hand when the boat is not running. Is this normal?

It looks like the top of the tower shaft is connected to something under the flywheel. Looking at the diagrams, it looks like it is connected to a trigger??? I'm not sure what that does, so I apologize if I don't sound very educated here

Anyway, should the tower shaft rotate by hand if the boat is not running? Should the trigger rotate somehow? Again, sorry to ask a dumb question. Thanks for your patience.

The trigger allows the power packs to fire when it's that cylinders turn to fire.
You should be able to advance the tower shaft some when unhooked from the cable.
The trigger just sets on top of the motor. The triggers base is lubed and maybe dry and seized?
Gonna have to take the flywheel off and see if something's wrong.
Be careful when removing the flywheel. It's been on there for a long time and doesn't want to come off.
The top of the flywheel there are 3, 1/4-20 bolts. They are to install a puller.
They aren't very strong and can pull out under pressure.
You mightb have to drill out and tap to a bigger size.
I use a 3 jaw puller.
Over on iboats Force/ Chrysler Forum. One of the top post is a link to a procedure called a link and sinc.
Go there and read up on setting the linkage.