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Neutral Button on Shift Lever Sticking

T

tmakows

Member
Hey Guys.....got a new one for you. Have a 91 Chris Craft Concept with OMC 460 King Cobra in it. I've been having this issue for about the past year now. My shift lever on the boat has a neutral button in the center of it. I have to use this button to start my boat on a cold start. For those of you familiar with it, it allows me to basically shift the lever and give the engine gas without actually putting the boat into gear. The issue I'm having is that this button seems to be malfunctioning intermittently.

My cold start procedure is as follows: 1. Pump the throttle lever all the way forward and all the way back 2 times. 2. Push the neutral button in and put the throttle back about 1/4 of the way. 3. Turn the key to start the boat.

The problem I am having is when I turn the key sometimes, nothing is happening. In other words, because something is sticking in that button, it is not going into neutral and as a safety precaution the boat will not start with the engine in gear. So what I have to do is just keep moving the lever around and keep pushing the button in and out. Eventually, it will work. My concern is that eventually something is going to finally break and I won't be able to get the boat started at all this way because of the boat being in gear when it should actually be in neutral.

I have tried to spray some WD40 in the lever, and it seemed to help a bit but I am still having the issue. Does anyone out there have any ideas that I can try? I called around and to replace the entire throttle is right around $600 with labor. Don't feel like spending that kind of money if I don't have to obviously.

I have attached a pic of the throttle as I am not exactly sure of the model it is.
 

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More than likely, the switch behind the push button is:
1) flakey
2) adjustment has slipped
3) mounting for switch is loose

It is not likely that you will get a mechanic to fix that for you as it seems these days that most mechanics subscribe to the "cardboard box" repair philosophy, i.e., whatever is wrong can be fixed by selling the customer something that comes in a cardboard box (or in an obnoxious plastic pack)... nothing apparently is ever repaired anymore, only replaced.

If you remove the control from the side panel and look at the back of the control, or if you are nimble hang upside down and look behind the panel at the back of the switch you may be able to figure out what is wrong. I'm not familiar with that control but most likely the switch is a standard switch, not one made by the control company.
 
Thanks for the feedback. I wonder if I would be able to get to that switch by just removing the button and seeing what's behind it? I believe that the button does come off.
 
While every one of these single lever controls is slightly different and I've never seen one of yours, I doubt that just removing the button without dismounting the control itself would be helpful, or even doable. Typically, that button has a fairly high mechanical load on it as typically it shifts the gear quadrant that controls the shift cable in an out of lock with the throttle lever. There is a fair chance that the switch itself is the last thing "in the stack" of mechanical elements furthest from the front plate, i.e., not immediately behind the button.

In the long run, the easiest thing to do would be to un-mount the control itself. Often this involves disconnecting both the throttle and shift cables. The cables are each fastened in two places: one a clamp of the jacket to the frame of the control and the other at the movable end of the cable itself (often a cotter pin). When (if) you take the cable end itself off the control you will typically see that the fitting on the end is threaded. Do not disturb this setting as it is an adjustment.

When designers started making these things "stylish", they often created "Rube Goldbergs"
 
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