Logo
FULL SITE MENU

15HP Merc outboard dies when shifted into Reverse

P

PontoonSam

New member
I'm hoping someone can give me a good guess as to what this problem is so I know whether to take the engine to a guy or try wrenching on it. Here's what it is doing:

Take the boat to the lake today, engine fires right up and we run out the a nearby spot to fish. Medium throttle, coast to the spot, reverse for brakes. Everything working good. Run to a couple other spots, same story. Hit full throttle a couple times out and back without issue. Gas is reasonably new... say two weeks old.

Then I run back to the dock, try to use reverse to back away from the dock. As soon as I shift into R the engine dies. Starts on the first try, R = engine dies. At this point I decide to go forward to leave the dock area. I'm able to idle forward fine, revs a bit as I throttle up but the rest of the throttle movement does nothing. So I have no reverse at all, and only a bit of forward power.

Thoughts? I know I didn't hit anything between the last spot and the dock. Engine is a 1996 15EL. Model No: 1015312SD

Thanks!
 
I've heard of this happening on motors that are installed way too deep in the water. If the exhaust relief hole in the tower is closed off it will stall.

Jeff
 
Will is start and idle or do you have to give it throttle to keep in going? (with or without it being in forward gear)
 
galamb said:
Will is start and idle or do you have to give it throttle to keep in going? (with or without it being in forward gear)
Click to expand...

It starts every try and idles fine.

For the previous comment, the motor isn't mounted wrong. I've been out 7 or 8 times on this boat since spring and never had any problems. And the previous owner used it for years.

Thanks.
 
In case anyone reads this and wonders what happened... we opened the motor and one of the connector rods was off of the pin in the rear. There is a retaining clip of some sort that keeps that middle connector rod from traveling other ways than front to back and it was unclipped. We put the rod back on the pin and closed the clip. That fixed the problem.

Not sure if it will happen again, but at least if it does I can quickly fix it on the water. And if that happens I'll look into replacing the clip.
 
Back
Top