Morse motor throttle unusably sticky between neutral and engaged

[Darwining]

Hi,

Me and my partner have a Hurley 2470 with a Morse throttle attached to a Nanni engine-- the kind of single throttle that pulls out to go into neutral, wherein you move it forward to start the engine, and then return the throttle to the centre position and push in (or it "snaps back into place") to engage, then forward engaged to go forward, and move towards aft for reverse.

I anticipate that we, novice boat owners and general idiots, have messed up something recently (explanation forthcoming) as now the throttle is not only stiff in moving forward and back (in neutral, although I assume also engaged but we haven't moved since the incident) but also almost immovably stuck in the push-in/pull-out engaged/neutral positions. I've done my share of googling and looking at cables, and feeding oil through them, etc, and I've looked into the gear mechanism, and attacked it with marine grease and tried to work some into the cables. However I can't find any info on the in/out part of the throttle mechanism, and while it's stiff laterally it's almost uselessly seized in that in/out position.

The incident mentioned above is that while in the marina we tried to "repark" the boat form fore-in to aft-in, but the proximity of expensive boats and some general newbie-panicking resulted in one of us gunning the engine from forward into reverse quite quickly, a few times, something that I have later discovered is a "do not ever do this or terrible things will happen". Before that the throttle was a little stiff but usable, now it refuses to cooperate.
My hands are covered in marine grease and I'm pretty frustrated, so any light to shed would be amazing. Or I guess just call a professional and beg forgiveness for whatever we've done...

Thanks all.

 

[RichardS]

You can check that the problem is definitely at the control lever by disconnecting the cables at the engine end. Usually just needs removal of a split pin. However, I assume that it will be the control lever so you need to do some dismantling to get lubrication into the right place. The lever is probably held on with a grub screw or similar so I would firstly remove that and then see whether you can get some spray oil down into the mechanism and try and work it loose.

If that doesn't work, you will have to remove the fitting to get to the mechanism.

Richard

 

[Boater Sam]

Disconnect both gear and throttle cables at the engine end. Check that the throttle on the engine and the gear lever on the gearbox move freely as they should.
If so, check the movement of the Morse lever, if its still stiff I would suspect one of the cables has frayed inside the outer and needs replacing before it snaps.

 

[mrangry]

I have just replaced my single lever control as it was badly worn internally. Only discovered this when trying to berth in the marina where I couldn't engage astern. My cables are also a little stiff and next on the list to do. As previously said, remove engine/gearbox end of cables to eliminate issues there.

 

[scottie]

Miss adjustment of throttle cable try setting up in gear zero throttle rather than in neutral zero throttle

 

[duncan99210]

Whilst my morse control isn’t the same as the OPs (push button in, not pull out to engage neutral) I had similar problems in that the control was increasingly stiff to use and more difficult to move from forward to reverse. Then part of the control lever mechanism broke: i bodged it for the remainder of the season with a jubilee clip but in the end replaced both cables and the control. The cables had become almost unmovable, which in turn had led to damaging the control lever mechanism. Given that the cables weren‘t overly expensive (about €40 IIRC) it made sense to replace the, rather than trying to work out why they‘d become stiff and unusable. New kit makes life so much easier, no struggles to engage neutral or move from forward to reverse.