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1971 5.5 Ted Williams/eska shift problem

Jack Additon

New member
Hey guys, I'm extremely new to outboards, never laid hands on one but I'm tired of paddling my Jon boat around so I bought a Ted Williams off CL for $20 bucks. Found some new parts and rebuilt the carb, got it running today but I noticed it does not shift into neutral. I stripped the stuff back off the engine, took everything off of the shift rod, and intended to remove the "power head":confused: from the lower unit but the shift rod seems to be interfering with its removal. I thought maybe the shift rod was splined and could be pulled out but that didn't work so I tried unscrewing it thinking it could be threaded in... I noticed when indexed a certain direction the shift rod could be pushed further into the unit but I didn't get anywhere with that either. I don't have a book for it and the diagram on sears website wasn't detailed enough to figure anything out, so after much head scratching I decided to turn to the forums for help. Can anyone tell me how to remove this shift rod and/or how to fix the problem? It starts and runs while stuck in drive but I'd really like to have neutral. If it helps the model number is 21759430
 
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I decided to get a little more rowdy with the upper unit and figured out the problem was that the driveshaft was seized into the clutch. The shift rod can then be removed by removing the cam off the end of the shift rod. If anyone has one of these off be sure to replace the o-ring in the bottom of the clutch and coat the driveshaft with some anti-seize. Now.... Does anyone have a clutch for this outboard? The part number is 56027, I've found a couple for $60 hoping to find one cheaper
 
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