Brent wrote: My electric shift leg is on a 1962/63 OMC in-board...with a V-4 80 hp engine. A rare bird indeed. I was hoping of course that merely changing the lower unit would in some way allow me to convert the shift. I may be jumping the gun anyway cause I haven't even tried the electric shift. It may still work as the boat may nor have a lot of hours on it. Our boating season isn't that long up here.
I don't think you'll have any alternatives but to use the Selectric. Doubt there would be any replacements for that in an I/O that likely only ever came with electric shift.
Nothing really wrong with the Selectric if it's working OK. Biggest issue inside is the Fwd or Reverse springs break. Then you have no gear in that direction, and you'd need to dismantle the lower unit and replace the darned spring.
2nd problem is if the electrical cable is cracked/shorted. If your cable to the L/U is in good shape, then you should be OK. Note that if you change the impeller, the cable has to go out with the L/U. So you'd disconnect at the inside connections and feed it out as you pull the L/U. I'd expect there's a hole somewhere on the way out, that the cable snaps into. You'd want to lube the cable up real good so it'll slide out easily.
Worst issue I've seen with Selectric outboards in Salt Country is the cable salts up in the entrance plate hole, then the cable won't go out. Most of the time you have to cut the cable to get the lower unit out, and then of course it's shot. The cure for that is to slather up the cable and the entrance plate hole with Permatex No. 3 gasket dressing, which acts as a salt barrier.
Last issue is with the shift control switches in the remote control box. An occasional failure. But not as common as issues with the lower unit or cable. Long as you're getting power back to the shift cable when it's supposed to, you're OK.
You can test this with a meter. Blue wire (only) energized with +12V to ground=Reverse; Green wire (only) energized with +12V to ground=Forward. No voltage to either wire=Neutral.
A good way to test the Fwd and Reverse gear springs in the L/U is to apply +12V to both blue and green wire; if the springs are both good and nothing inside is slipping, you won't be able to move the prop. This is because both springs are magnetized so they grip their respective clutch hub; therefore the prop shaft can't move in either direction.
The biggest downside to this setup is that if you lose electrical power, there's no drive at all. And of course if the Fwd spring breaks while underway, you're gonna spend a long time backing up!
Later model Hydromatic electric shift gearboxes sorta fixed that problem, they were always in gear and electrical solenoids were engaged to route oil, via an oil pump, to move the shift clutch to Neutral and Reverse. Even these had issues, if the electrical was fouled you'd only have Forward. At least you'd get back to the ramp faster! And if the oil got contaminated (water leaks), the filter screen would plug and then oil wouldn't pump the shift clutch. Stuck in Fwd again. IIRC the last of the electric shift outboards was '72 or so. Not sure but I think OMC I/O's may have used electric shift a bit longer than that. Mechanical shift (at least modern ones) is much better!
All that being said, a Selectric is the smoothest-shifting old L/U you'll ever srun! No clutch dogs to go "CLUNK".
So there ya have it, everything you didn't know you needed to know about Selectrics (or maybe didn't even want to know)!
HTH.............ed