BF225 - Fine tuning thottle adjustment

My new port 225 (AK3) has just over 100 hrs and has something slightly funky going on with throttle cable. It responds perfectly adding power in small increments (eg. tweaking up to nearest 100-rpm mark), but when throttling down - especially in the mid-range eg. 4000-ish, it doesn't respond as smoothly, I can adjust down and nothing happen to RPM until I keep going down a bit more then it drops maybe 2-300 RPM in one go and I have to adjust back up a hair to get it to stay.

It used to down-throttle as smoothly as it up-throttled. Everything else seems normal - responds well otherwise and goes WOT no problem etc.

I went through the shop manual adjustment procedure and everything seems within tolerances. I was hoping for some obvious slack/stretch in the cable - but compared to starboard motor (the slack feels about the same).

Any ideas what else I should be looking for given the symptoms?

Throttle controls and cables were replaced with new about a year ago. Haven't looked into the control-side of the equation at all...

Top of mind - several things....

1. Make sure that the lock nuts on the throttle cables are all locked down securely. I've had the ones on the top at the intake come loose.
2. While checking that, make sure that the seats for the throttle cables are not loose.
3. Make sure the two throttle pulleys are not binding and not too loose on their shafts.
4. Check where the main throttle cable runs through the big black grommet to the engine to make sure it's not binding.
5. Pull off the cover to the throttle control at the helm and make sure all of that is tight and not binding.

If all that doesn't turn up anything, then replace the throttle cable from the throttle control to the engine.

Thanks for great list. Gonna pull boat next week to swap fluids so will dig in a bit deeper then.

Now that you mention the grommet ... I did notice both my engines aren’t rigged with the black grommet at the entrance - previous installer put in some other hard plastic tube that splits into two halves that flex conduit/rigging clamps onto. I bought a pair of grommets and tried installing one (on this motor) and could not get all the cables to go through it - so rolled back to the hard shell. I bet I messed something up under there that has moved slightly.

Roger that. Let us know what you find.

after living with this all summer, finally got the chance to look at it a little closer. the problem ended up being that some of the wires for the sensor plugs in that area were stuffed under the throttle-body wheel and giving a little resistance to the wheel the cable goes over. hopefully it works better, hard to test it without a sea trial.