Ever since I have put the boat in the water I am having problems with the forward gear. I'm now at 11 hours. At first my throttle lever was very stiff. I fixed it by turning the adjustment screw for the disk plate behind the throttle plastic cover. (Thanks to the archive in this forum.)

Now that is fixed it is even more apparent that I have something else to adjust. When going in forward, the gear doesn't always engage. I have to be careful since the engine is revving freely and I don't want the drive to engage at high RPM. By playing back to neutral and forth with the throttle it engages after a while. Sometimes it takes 2 to 3 tries.

I saw the cable going on top of the engine undeneath the plastic cover. But that seemed only for the engine not the drive. Where should I be looking at? Should I be lubricating somewhere on a new boat?

It best done by a dealer and its usually done at the shifer base.

I wouldn't mind trying to adjust it myself first. Dealer is 3 hours away and swamped with work.

Any more info on this shifter base?

I did not go to Volvo repair school, so I would go to a dealer, but if you do it and it works, post some photos. Sorry I could not help more.

One has a shifter base if its a mounted on a flat surface (top mounted) shifter at the helm station.

You may have a side mounted shifter.

Phatboy,

11 hours? You're under warranty. Get the dealer to look at it or another VP certified shop.

Yes but that would be some precious down time on our short summer. For now I'm asking for help on how to adjust it myself. If that fells then I will bring it out of the water to bring it to a dealer.

Please no discrimination because I'm under warranty. I want to get help from you guys too.

This is good. I'll look at a shifter base at the helm. Maybe it just needs some silicone grease.

The stiffness could be lube, but I doubt it. The sloopy neutral is an adjustment most of the time.

Spend the money on the Volvo shop manual for your particular engine/drive. It will have a step by step of this adjustment as well as hundreds of other maintenance items.

I have tried the other manuals such as Seloc and Clymer and they work but the pics and drawings are better in the factory manuals. If you are three hours from a shop then you need a manual.

In the meantime run a search on shift cable adjustment here. I bet there is a thread in the archive.

X2. The manual will help, but sometimes the writing is not the best. It does sound like your cables are out of adjutment. For good measure, have you checked all fluids, etc.

There is adjustment possible at the outdrive end, certainly on the earlier DPS drives . The shift cable attaches to the actuator via a bronze cube nut/ split pin. This is all underneath the plastic cover, which is held on by 3 bolts. The position of that cube nut can be adjusted on the cable by screwing it one way or the other, after the split pin/ washer has been removed. Sometimes there is a locknut on the shift cable thread as well that needs to be slackened off before the cube nut can be turned.. Basically, in neutral that cube nut needs to be lying central in the slot in which it engages.

I also had to adjust mine at the shift lever slightly, as there was not quite enough adjustmet available at the outdrive end.

You should also check that the cable doesn't have unduly tight radii.

Graham

If I recall correctly you have two cables, one throttle and one gear select. I think Graham has it pretty detailed out. Does the boat go into reverse real quickly? If so that cable is definitely out of adj.

Here is a schematic of a drive similar to yours. The inset at the top should resemble what you are looking for.

Hope this helps.

Select "Marine Drive and Transmissions" then "By Drive" then "DP E Intermediate Housing.pdf"

I checked the fluids before starting it the first time. All good.

Reverse has no problem engaging. But gets very stiff after I push it a little.

I'll look at the outdrive end first as it seems simple from the diagram. Then move up to the throttle shifter. Then get a shop manual if I can't figure it out.

Thank you for all you suggestions and help.

I think it's probably a DPS, rather than the DPE drive you have.


http://www.marinepartsexpress.com/VP_Schematics/MARINE%20DRIVE%20&%20TRANSMISSION/SX-M_DP-SM/TRANSMISSIONS/Shift%20Mechanism.pdf

Graham

I'd get the shop manual and read thru the procedure first. Then if it makes sense to me I might try the adjustment but you have to be careful, misadjustments of shift cables can cause damage to the drive's shifting components. This was a common problem on the OMC Cobra drives, if not properly adjusted they would jump out of gear and that would ruin the dog clutch gears in the lower unit. When they are properly adjusted they shift great. I have the manual, read it through, but still had the pro do mine. 20 years old and it shifts great.

I was able to fix it myself in about 5 minutes yesterday. As soon as I looked at the shift cable at the throttle I new it was wrong. The adjustment was all the way out and the nut to keep it in place was not even secured. Something tells me someone at the factory skip this item on their check list.

I removed the cotter pin. Turn the adjustment to be 1/2 inch closer on the thread. Place it back and and secured the nut. Made sure the gear forward and rear engaged before the throttle cable did. Easy to see when your under there. Boated all day and it shifting was perfect. Thanks everyone!

Great to hear it was an easy fix!

Great! But you still need to get a shop manual since you are so far from a dealer. You will use it lots of times a year and one trip saved from the dealer will be worth the cost.

For sure I'll get one. I love knowing how the engine and drive works. Saves time and money.

Glad to have come across this thread. I seem to have developed a delay in forward engaging. Takes up to 2 seconds (that's a long time when you're manuevering in tight quarters with windy conditions) but its still smooth as silk when it does. Reverse jumps in almost too soon and abit rougher. I'm going to have to look in to what you adjusted.

Echo 'get a manual', if not factory, ANY kind...

The clue I read was "Reverse has no problem engaging. But gets very stiff after I push it a little."--your cable was already tight in reverse but your stick wasn't done 'pushing' it. Sounds like yours was so far out you're lucky it came OUT of reverse without having to shift past neutral. Glad you could see and fix it yourself, now you know your boat a little better. Warrantee's are nice, but sometimes it's like going to the ER for a hangnail, just easier to do it yourself.

I had the same thing happen to my SX drive that developed around 50 hours of use. It would gain rpm before engaging into forward. I fixed mine by adjusting the linkage on the drive. Also, I've found that applying marine grease to the linkage every season reduces the effort to shift into forward and back to reverse. Every now and then it requires a quite a bit of effort to go into neutral from forward. Grease seems to help a bunch.

Where exactly do you apply the grease? To the linkage on the drive? Mine takes quite a bit of effort to shift into gear..

After owning my last boat with a Volvo DP for a few years, it would occasionally take a second or two to go into gear, especially from neutral to forward. This would never happen when the engine was cold, but only after it ran for awhile.

Not too cool if you are trying to dock it.

It only happened a few times, and I ended up getting rid of it when I got my current boat before I figured out what was going on. It felt like the delay was related to the cable, as it felt kind of "muddy" - which is about the best I can describe it.


Typically the cable system tends to snake around the boat - you should see my current boat - the cables are probably 30ft long, and each goes through at least 540 degrees of direction change.

Things I can think of are; stiff cable due to too many bends, stiff cable due to a dirty cable, or possibly a faulty installation with too tight of a bend that could create a trouble-spot as the boat ages.

While this is not from Volvo, I looked at the documentation for my Teleflex shifters. There is no mention of lubrication as a maintenance issue, so I am not sure if this would be possible.

The only thing I could find is the mention of a bend radius in the cables of not less than 8". Since production boats are sometimes designed and constructed haphazardly, I'll bet there are some installations that exceed this.

I would check the throttle disk plate adjustment screw first. It takes two minutes. Here is the link to the thread that I used to adjust mine.

You first take the center cover off.


This is with the rest of the cover off and throttle removed. You don't need to do this. It's just to show where the adjustment screw is. Instead you just move the throttle lever back to have access to the hole where the screw is.