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2005 Honda 75 Won't Shift into Gear

H

hit4cycle

New member
New poster here. Recently, I changed the impeller on my 2005 Honda 75hp. The good news is it pumps a strong stream out the P hole. The bad news is it now will not shift into either forward or reverse. So, I again dropped the lower unit to try and see what's the problem. I found that the female socket-like gear receptacle at the lower end of the shift rod will not engage with the shift gear that protrudes from the lower unit. They are about 1/8" apart. I can manually pull up the gear from the lower unit about 1/2" which would be enough to engage with the socket at the low end of the shift rod, but when I release that gear it retracts back into the lower unit as if it were spring loaded, resulting in a disconnect between the shift road and the lower unit. I changed the impeller with the gear shift in neutral and did not in any way mess with the linkage adjustments. If I need to adjust the linkage there is a very good earlier post describing how to do this but I don't understand why the linkage would need adjusting if I didn't change anything. Can anyone make sense of this? Thanks in advance.
 
The lower unit will often jump into forward while you are working on it / not looking.---So it may be that the lower spline was not matched with the spline of the upper shift rod.------Did you pull it together with a wrench?----------------Try it again with control in forward and lower unit in forward.--------------Hopefully you did not damage the bits under the powerhead.
 
Ok, I haven't worked on one of these so I'm just "brainstorming" with you. As racerone said, it may have changed gear while you were working on it. These shifters change gears by ROTATING not going up and down. So, it is curious why it won't match up now.

But, it sounds to me like you are simply pulling up on the lower shift shaft and not ROTATING it to try and select another gear. Maybe if you can get it to shift it will "change elevation", so to speak, and engage. Also, these will resist changing gear if the prop shaft is not rotating while the shifter is being moved simultaneously.

So, try rotating the prop while rotating the lower shift rod and see if that will cause it to change gear. Mark the shift rod with a piece of tape wrapped around it about 1/4" from where it protrudes from the gear case before you begin. This will give you a reference to judge if it is indeed going up or down as you select forward or reverse.

Hopefully someone else looking in will have some better experience to share with you than I have.
Good luck.
 
Thanks for the response. It's not a case of the spline and gear not matching up because before reassembly I made sure that the shifting rod and the gear coming out of the lower unit were both in neutral (I can shift the lower unit gear manually with channel locks). You can visually ensure they are in sync because there's a short straight section without splines on both the shift rod and the L.U. gear. They simply will not extend enough to engage each other. I'm not sure that that gear on the lower unit is supposed to extend and retract the way I described in my first post....about 1/2". Not sure what you mean about bits under the powerhead. I'm beginning to think I need to adjust the shift linkage even though I don't know how it would come out of adjustment when I didn't mess with it.
 
Thanks JGMO and hondadude for the help. The guy who made the post hondadude links to sounds he had the same problem I'm having. I'll check to see if that e-clip popped out and the shift rod has migrated up. Sounds like a plausible reason for the problem I'm having. Keep those ideas coming!
 
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