I'm looking for a little guidance re: my starboard "shifter" (like the one above). I'll tell you everything I know and hopefully somebody can sort it out a little.
Last winter I had my stbd ZF transmission rebuilt, it was whining and a fluid test showed lots of bad metals present. I was told that the shift lever had not been engaging fully, possibly causing the whine I heard and the degradation of the gears. A new oil cooler was part of the service.
Fast forward to this summer. I still hear an intermittent whine in the transmission at idle and when docking. It may go away when the boat has been running but I couldn't say for sure. Fluid levels are stable.
Toward the end of the summer this same shifter started to stick. It required more effort to get in and out of gear and you sometimes got a buzzing sound "between gears".
I did a layman's inspection before putting her up for the winter and found I could easily and smoothly move the lever on the transmission by hand. Up at the controller movement was stiff and jerky as mentioned earlier. I noticed the exposed cable seemed dry and maybe a little rusty.
I gave it a shot of CX but only a few inches is actually exposed.
An comments regarding possible diagnosis and treatment are welcome.
Sounds like you'll be replacing the cable(s). The humming or buzzing sound you hear is the transmission not coming out of gear completely.
This could be caused from the cable being stiff and not allowing the full travel. Instead your pulling all the cable "slack" out but not throwing either lever (helm or transmission) far enough.
If the engaugement wasn't complete into gear during the prior year then yes you could have killed the gear over time.
First things first:
Replace the stiff cable with a new one. Morse (teleflex) Red jacket 44's are fine as long as there are no sharp bends.
Run the cable and verify you can push and pull the end by hand when its in place.
Reconnect to clutch and gear box linkage and set up so that you are against the stops in each direction. If you simply can't get against the stops both ways, favor forward (your generally in this gear longer than reverse)
While your at it replace the second clutch cable as well. Especially if they are roughly the same age.
If your gears are the ZF220's remember to apply liberal amounts of lube to the shift selector pin on the transmission. This is generally the cause of the sticking on that model.
Be sure to review the gear engaugement every once in a while to verify nothing has changed. Its cheap insurance down the road
What I was looking for was "spray a little more CX on it and you'll be fine". But you have confirmed what I suspected, I need to run new cables sooner rather than later, thanks.
