Re: 1957 Marcury Mark 55 40 hp Lower unit Help

[billw]

The shift in the gear case is spring loaded towards forward as a fail-safe measure. It will normally go into reverse a lot harder than forward and will slip into forward from neutral with very little effort, because of the spring pressure. Sometimes you may have to turn the drive shaft or prop shaft a bit to get it to go into reverse, when vise-grip testing, to align the dogs, too.

As for why it won’t work when together, I have seen a few cases where the shift shaft splines are so worn that there is not enough movement at the bottom, to shift all the way. Also, people like to force them in reverse and this can twist the shift shaft. Make sure the reverse lock mechanism is free moving, too….Part of shifting into reverse involves moving the reverse lock hook. In fact, sometimes they won’t shift into reverse if there is no tilt angle pin installed or you have lowered the outboard in neutral and the hook is laying against the pin. Try to always raise and lower the engine in forward gear. (NOT RUNNING, of course.)

Long live American manufacturing!