DF250AP - Shift actuator out of alignment / not moving. (FBW)

[aplt242]

No good deed goes unpunished...as they say.

Boater was stranded on beach with boat sideways getting hit by surf, I made a bridal and pulled him off into deeper water. In the process my Port engine wrapped one of my tow lines and stopped the engine in forward. Managed to get him away and diagnose later.

The engine was stuck in forward, the line had come off / wasn't in prop. The engine would not start due to not being in neutral. Tried to reset multiple ways to no avail.

I regrettably disconnected the linkage between the actuator arm and the shift arm/neutral switch. The actuator then extended in both directions to seemly full extension, then went all the way forward and remained there. I was never able to get it to match up to the neutral switch / shift arm to be able to sync them up.

I am new to these engines and have read now that batt should be disconnected when actuator is disconnected. As of now the actuator is full forward and unresponsive. I have disconnected power completely and it remained that way upon power up/start.

Am I left with needing a tech to re-sync these items with the possibility of a destroyed actuator or do I have any options?

Thanks!

[JCarl05]

I ran into this problem yesterday. I ended up fixing it surprisingly. I took off the actuator and connected it to a car battery (by cutting the wire) I ran it back and forth until it lined up with the shift arm. Once lined up I then reconnected the wire adapter with electrical tape. Make sure you clip the wire back on the motor before reinstalling because the wire is short.

Also remember reverse polarity when hooking it up to the car battery. If you go to far one way then simply swap the negative and positive.

this method was used on a twin 300 Suzuki 2007 or 2008.

It had no problem syncing with the other engine.

[KillerWhale2]

Hello JCarl05 ,

I read your post from June on how you managed to fix the shift actuator problem you had. I am having the same problem since I have also been a fool switching the engine on with the linkage disconnected from the actuator, so it's now lock in the forward position and not moving at all.
Before I attempt your solution, a couple of questions I hope you can help me with!

1) Was your actuator completely dead? I.e. no sound or movement from it once it had frozen/locked in the forward position?
2) How much trial and error was it with the car battery getting it to line up?
3) Seeing that you did this about a month ago, how has it been running since then? Any problems?

Thanks,
Lars

[KillerWhale2]

JCarl05 - I'm hugely appreciative for sharing what worked for you, in terms of getting the actuator lined up, since it worked flawlessly for me today too!
People told me that there was no way that was going to work, but I thought, what the h... - nothing ventured, nothing gained! And blimey, it worked.
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