My boat will only drive in reverse..... Wtf!?!?!?

[osoyboy]

i wa son the water the other day and my boat stopped driving forward, then i could only drive backwards.

All the linkages are still connected but the black part at the back thats supposed to move up and down does not move at all......

what happened?

THanks

 

[timeman]

"the black part " at the back is your reverse bucket....It sounds like your linkage cable is broken?, or way, WAY too loose. When you shift from "R" to "F" the "black part" is supposed to move upward, out of the way of the water jet flow.....If nothing is moving up and down, my guess is: your cable is broken somewhere between the shift lever and the reverse bucket....

 

[KK40384]

The black part = reverse bucket in case anyone is wondering since everything back there is pretty much black lol

 

[go-hokies]

Or the pin that attaches to the cable has come out - Happened on by Challenger 2000 and had to lodge my flip flop in the jet drive cavity to keep the shoft gate up - was able to make it back to marine 2 miles away without any issues.

a $1.00 pin and $.25 cotter ( stainless of coarse ) from ACE hardware and I was back in business

 

[chlarson23]

had the same problem on my old 1800. my cable broke where it connected to the shift lever, i was able to rethread the existing cable and reattach it. it's more likely that it broke at a connection point then in the middle somewhere. just unscrew you shift lever body and pull it up and take a look. I would bet that's where your problem is if everything in the rear is still connected.

 

[LJ666]

Same thing recently happened to my 97 challenger. The cable snapped right below the threads where it connects to the shifter and I could only go in reverse. It was the Saturday of a long weekend with lots of boating still planned and nowhere to take it to get it fixed so I came up with a "temporary" solution that actually seems to be holding up. I simply removed and discarded the broken threaded piece that was still connected to the shifter, drilled two holes in the cable right below where it snapped, and re-attached it to the shifter using nail gun nails as makeshift Cotter pins through the two holes I just drilled. Not that I would recommend it but I was back on the water in about 30 minutes pulling the kids on a tube and it's still holding up well a couple of weeks later.

 

[bills1974]

Same thing just happened last week to my 2007 200 Speedster, except mine was stuck up with when I was getting ready to dock...let's just say, slowing down wasn't easy. Anyway, I've checked all links and everything looks properly connected and I can manually move the reverse shells up and down from the back of the boat. I'm assuming the cable snapped inside the tube so I just ordered a new cable...hopefully get it to install this weekend and see if that fixes it.

There's a good diagram of the whole assembly here: http://www.seadoopartshouse.com/oemparts/a/sea/500cccdff870021b3c6a7377/reverse