BF20 stops when shifted in reverse

Hey guys,

I recently cleaned my carburator so I ran my motor with the prop off in a tub of water to adjust the idle mixture. I got the motor running great, I adjusted the idle down to a reasonable speed once I adjusted the idle mixture. The motor will shift into forwards without as much as a bump, but when I shift it into reverse the engine will peter out as if the kill-switch lanyard is pulled. A quick google search shows something about a shift cut-out switch, but I have seen no evidence of the BF20 even having one. All help is much appreciated.

Is there a chance the shift linkage could be fouling a wire harness?

I checked and there are no wire near any of the shift linkage.I did notice that a part of the linkage which is used with a remote was pushing on the choke cable. I've removed that bit of linkage (It's only used by morse cables) and will check tomorrow if that solved it.

On another note, is it true the forward gear is spring-loaded so it will always pop into gear even if the clutch doesn't match up? The reverse gear doen't seem to have this feature (i.e. you need to rotate the prop for it to pop into reverse sometimes).

The need to rotate the prop a hair to put in reverse, or forward for that matter, is not unusual on any outboard - ones that aren't running anyway.

So I got everything to work, I'll explain what I think was going on in case other people have the same problem in the future. I removed the linkage which was bumping into the choke cable, and now it shifts into reverse without a problem. Which begged the question, why is a slight nudge against the choke causing the engine to stall? I pulled the choke slightly while the engine was idling and it indeed caused the engine to stall. Were's what I think is going on, you can correct me if I'm wrong. These Honda outboards don't really have a choke, they have a plunger which dumps a whole bunch of fuel into the carburator. This plunger is quite binary so it's pretty much on or off. When you nudge this "choke" while the engine is warmed up and idling the plunger will cause the mixture to become too rich which will stall the engine. I tried to check this by revving up the engine and then pulling the choke, now the engine would continue running.
Anyway, let me know if that explanation makes any sense. Thanks for your help!

I'm not sure on the smaller Honda's, so I can't be a lot of help. The bigger ones, starting at 40hp, have a manual choke, a fancy automatic choke (vacuum line nightmare), or fuel injection. None that I'm aware of use the fuel dump type enrichment device/choke that you see on 2 stroke outboards.