This Saturday, we again tried to finish the installation of the transmission and throttle control cables. When we left the boat two weeks ago, we still had to connect the starboard side cables to the transmission itself. The shifting lever on the transmission is located on the outboard side, so we had to crawl back behind the engine. We did this numerous times until we finally had all the tools and hardware we'd need. Here are the new cables finally in the original bracket and connected to the shift lever.
We tried operating all of the controls from both the lower helm and the bridge and they worked fine, in fact so much smoother than the old cables that we're glad we finally got this project done. But there was one thing that bothered us. The control handles weren't exactly even. Maybe we've grown overly anal with age, but as you advance the throttles, for instance, they should apply power evenly. When you shift the transmissions into reverse, both levers should be in exactly the same position. They certainly are on a new boat and we'd be damned if they weren't going to on our old boat.
The fittings on the controls screw onto the ends of the control cables. When we installed them on the new cables, we screwed them all the way on, until they bottomed out. That, we thought, would make the cable travel the same throughout. It didn't.
For the throttle cables, that was too tight. In other words, with the controls pulled all the way back, the carb linkage was against the curb idle set screws as they should be but when the throttles were advanced, there wasn't enough travel to even open the carb secondaries.
We started with the transmissions since they had positive forward and reverse stops. We adjusted the cables at the transmissions by unscrewing the fittings on the ends of the cables exactly the same number of turns (8) and then made the same adjustment at the upper and lower helms. This would have been fun to watch since we need both engine hatches open to work on the transmission ends but when the hatches are open, the ladder to the bridge must be removed. It was quite a workout putting up the ladder, checking the controls on the bridge and going back down below, removing the ladder so we could open the engine hatches yet again so we could get to the engines. We did this a number of times and we will say that the extra exercise kept up warm.
The port transmission still used the old cables since they always worked very smoothly but in the end, we had to disconnect those too at both ends and do our spin-the-fittings routine to get a solid reverse and solid forward.
The throttle cables took a little more adjustment to get the throttle levers (and the carb linkage) even when at an idle and then get maximum travel (also evenly) when the controls were advanced. Here's a pictures of them before we began adjusting them.
Once we got all four throttle cables adjusted to our satisfaction, it was time to declare the cable installation finished. The lever position for all of the upper and lower controls are even and all have enough travel to work properly. Next we move on to connecting the new power cables to the upper helm.
On Sunday, we loaded everything up and headed to Portland once again with a clear work plan in our mind. It was just below freezing at the boat yard and the wind was blowing like stink. We took the cover off of the bridge and began to figure out how we'd move all the wiring and cables back up under the bridge coaming. Unable to move around much laying on our back, we quickly became really cold. Eventually, we gave up and went home to do some projects there (like vacuuming).
Next weekend will come soon enough.
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