305 Shift Cables-gctid364997

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Last year I changed my shifting cables from the motor to the outdrive on my 2003 305 because they were shifting a little hard. My port engine is shill shifting hard going into reverse. This spring I am going to disconnect rear cable and make sure cable from shifter to motor is OK. Anyone have any other ideas. Thansk, Dan

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Are we talking about Merc A drives?

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Thats what I would do, also be sure to check the cable itself even a small kink can cause it to shift like a bear. I need to replace my cable soon, was hoping to this year but thats probably guna get put off for now.

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2850Bounty wrote:
Are we talking about Merc A drives?

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He has a 305, itll be b3 or b2 drives.

[cwiert Seasoned Member Find all posts View Profile Close cwiert]

I have the same issue. I replaced the cables from the engines to the drives last year and it still is too hard to shift. But if I disconnect those new lower cables at the linkage on the engine, it shifts smoothly, so that makes me think it's not the upper cables or the shifter itself. I dunno. I'll be following this thread to see if anyone has any suggestions.

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I have B2 drives. My friend has the same boat (305 B2) and he replaced his cables also last year and his port engine was still hard but it did loosen up as the year went on. My boat is just the opposite it was still stiff after the change but by the end of the season is was worse. We are also going to remove the plate at the top of the outdrive and make sure everything looks OK there.

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Apparently this is a fairly common issue with the B drives, and requires occassional lower cable replacement.

It may also be why Merc uses the two cables appose to a single shift cable on the B drives.

You can find quite a bit of information on this if you do a web search.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&g...KOauiQKu8oC_Cw

http://forums.iboats.com/showthread.php?t=294562

http://www.marineengine.com/boat-for...ing-2001-5-7-L

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biohazard wrote:

2850Bounty wrote:
Are we talking about Merc A drives?

He has a 305, itll be b3 or b2 drives.

Ooops, my bad, Ryan!

I tend to think of only the A drives using two shift cables ... main and lower.

I have to remind myself that the Merc cone clutch B drive operation is not like the Volvo Penta. Merc apparently separates this to make it easy to replace only the lower cable. Whereas the AQ series V/P uses one home run cable directly to the shift bell crank system. These cables will go for 15+ years or so.

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[RGrew176 Guru Find all posts View Profile Close RGrew176]

Dsully wrote:
I have B2 drives. My friend has the same boat (305 B2) and he replaced his cables also last year and his port engine was still hard but it did loosen up as the year went on. My boat is just the opposite it was still stiff after the change but by the end of the season is was worse. We are also going to remove the plate at the top of the outdrive and make sure everything looks OK there.

The port side shifter on my 3055 was always harder to shift than the starboard side. It did loosen up a lot as time went by.

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I've got a similar issue (slow engagement, not actually hard engagement). I'll be doing a set of lower cables when I do a full drive service next month, so if you're not in a hurry I can report the results.

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I ended up replacing all of my cables and my shifters with new Teleflex equipment and now all is smooth as butter. I went from a docking flunky to a docking hero now that I can actually control things smoothly instead of jerking in and out of gear and over-throttling. Best money I have spent on the boat thus far.

(okay, maybe docking hero is a bit of a stretch )