Adding a neutral safety switch?

Is it possible to add a neutral safety switch to single lever control? If so, how difficult would it be and any recommendations would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Which throttle/shift unit is your boat equipped with?
If it does not have a neutral safety switch, it may have a location for one.
In many cases, these are nothing more than a micro switch.

Although good to have as a safety feature, I will say that there are times when a neutral safety switch may not be desirable.
If you do not tow skiers or wake boarders, and if you were to run into trouble, it can be nice to be able to re-fire the engine without the need to go into neutral.

Your call on that!


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RicardoMarine said:

Which throttle/shift unit is your boat equipped with?
If it does not have a neutral safety switch, it may have a location for one.
In many cases, these are nothing more than a micro switch.

Although good to have as a safety feature, I will say that there are times when a neutral safety switch may not be desirable.
If you do not tow skiers or wake boarders, and if you were to run into trouble, it can be nice to be able to re-fire the engine without the need to go into neutral.

Your call on that!


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Click to expand...

It's a single shift Morse unit (MV-1?), it does not have any wires attached to it and it has a small knob you pull out if you want to increase the RPMs with the engine in neutral. It looks just like the one attached.

Here is a fuzzy pic of mine:

Despite having the little knob to ensure the boat is in neutral, sometimes I find myself about to start the boat without checking that the knob is pulled out first. I do not tow skiers, etc.

I had at least one incident with my boat with the exact same throttle unit, where I was able to limp home by virtue of being able to start the engine in gear. One of the venturis in my carb plugged and engine would not run under 1500 rpm. I had to transit a draw bridge which had a bridgekeeper... It was of course a no wake area and transiting the bridge above 1500 would have my boat generating a big rolling wake... so... I had to let the engine stall and have the boat coast thru... restarting several times. When I arrived at my marina I had the same issue... could not run in the marina @ 1600+ RPM.... so... stall, coast, restart (in gear... as its not safe to shift into gear above normal idle RPM)...stall.... It does require some mindfulness normally, however, most boats I've owned coincidentally have had the same shifter, so being mindful of starting up making sure the "button" is out is second nature to me now.