Shifter Lockout Repair

By the way great write up and pictures. Another how does that thingy work mystery solved.

Could you fit a little flat washer on top to keep the spring from walking into the slot??

Seems to be a fairly common issue and Marty Mabe had throw up a post that it was a fairly simple repair, so decided while I was waiting on inspiration on my fuel vent issue I'd pull the shifter off and have a looksey.

Seems I had 2 issues, #1 the spring was broken in half and #2 the pivot area was all gummed up with years of crud making it hard to move anyways.

Foot and spring as it was when removed, notice the overlapped bulge:


Spring pulled apart where it had broken and wrapped in on itself.


Shifter cavity mostly cleaned out:


To remove it from the boat all you gotta do is loosen the allen on the bottom of the shifter with a 5/32 key. It'll slide right off. To pull it apart use a 5/32" punch to drive out the pin holding the latch foot in. Then pull it out and rotate it off the lifting rod/wire. Then the spring will come off though its a little tough to get it around the 90 degree bend part. Cleaned out all the gunk and headed to the hardware store to get a new spring. Ended up going with a 9/32" diameter spring with a length of 3/8"(78 cents at True Value). It was damn close if not dead on to the same size as the original one. Put everything back together and used some silicon lube to keep everything from sticking and now it works like a charm.

After looking at everything it appears the reason these things break is because the surface opposite the foot that the spring is compressed against is slightly ramped and oversized. When I cycled the lever I noticed the spring tended to move around causing it to get angled into the thruway for the lift rod. In my last pic you can see the bottom edge is at the edge of the spring. So I think over time(years) the angling/twisting bends the spring enough to break it. Started to brainstorm a few ideas to fix it for good, then decided it wasn't worth the 78 cents and 10 minutes I'd need to spend every year or so to just replace it.

New spring, notice the foot is now at the correct 90 degree angle from the shifter: