Pics in the Dropbox
Alpha 1 Shift cable Excersizer
A problem with Alpha 1 and II outdrive lower units is; with infrequent use, the movement of the shift cable and transfer link in the lower unit becomes stiff. This causes the shift interrupter to stall the engine when shifting from neutral to forward or reverse, or when shifting from either gear to neutral. I disassembled the shift quadrant on the engine and could only manually move the shift cable with difficulty. There was now way I could loosen the action by manual operation. Repair requires removal of the outdrive leg to re-lube the transfer link bushings. If you have a couple buds or a fixture to help manhandle the heavy, unwieldy leg, the job is fairly easy. Without these requisites, it's a real PIA. Having encountered the shift/stall condition(for the 3rd time) in my Alpha 1 yet again after sitting all winter, I decided to circumvent the disassembly of the lower unit. I built a Shift Cable Excersizer using a used Bosch wiper motor. It mounts to the 2 pins in the shift quadrant. This unit shifts the lower unit back and forth through forward/neutral/reverse about once a second. In so doing, it excersizes the whole shift system and frees-up the stiff action. After a treatment with the Excersizer, I can now easily shift the cable by hand. Because the load overheats the wiper motor in 6-7 minutes of operation, I accommodated the duty cycle by running the Excersizer from a battery charger and switching the charger with a timer. The unit uses an Intermatic Digital Programmable light timer model D717C To operate the motor for a 5 minute period each hour. Since I was unsure if the wiper motor would have sufficient torque to do the job, I did not pay particular attention to aesthetics; just worked out the engineering and whacked it together from odds and ends around the shop.
JR Dweller in the cellar