TOPIC: 1959 Johnson 35hp not throttling up?

I bought a 1965 Starcraft Arrow a few weeks back and it has a 1959 Johnson Super Sea Horse 35hp on it. It starts and runs nice. This is my first experience with the mechanics of an outboard. So I'm making newbie mistakes of course.

First time out on the water and I can't get it to idle up. The knob on the motor (stamped "slow-start-fast") is cranked all the way up and the front control lever all the way forward and it just putts along. If I yoink down on the throttle linkage behind the carb (and accessible through the access door), it throttles up.

The previous owner kept the motor maintained and running. When he sold me the boat, he pulled out his plastic fuel tank and swapped in the original steel 6g tank. It's got the 3-prong connector on it. One hose with a bulb. It's possible that this setup is not 100% correct but I wouldn't know what to look for.

So maybe I have a cable linkage issue, maybe a fuel feed issue, and maybe something else? Given that it fires right up and stays running without issue, I didn't initially suspect a problem with the fuel system.

I will check compression later this week when I get a compression tester. I'll also verify spark. In the meantime, I'm going to see if I can understand how the throttle linkage is supposed to work and how to adjust it. Can I assume that when the control level is all the way forward, the throttle lever I'm talking about should be all the way down?

Also, I didn't dork with the external idle-speed knob (white plastic knurled stubby thing) because the idle speed seem fine. I did dork with the two rich/lean knobs next to the choke, but without much (if any effect.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Sounds like you have a cable or linkage problem. If it speeds up manually when you push the carb lever but not with the control lever something is out of adjustment. Disconnect the throttle cable and work the lever to make sure the cable is moving. If that is good then (with the motor NOT running) carefully follow all the connections, screw adjustments, slides etc. and see what's binding.

Posting pics of both the throttle and the connections at the motor will greatly help us to help you

Here are some pictures I took of my SSH RDS-20 before I rebuilt it. I needed them for reference when putting back together but maybe they can help you follow the linkage and maybe see if something is lose or missing. I circled the linkages, springs and slides. On the first picture there is an arrow pointing to a gear, check this out and make sure it's also working correctly.

63 Sabre wrote:

Here are some pictures I took of my SSH RDS-20 before I rebuilt it.

OK. Second pic is the lever I pulled down on manually to get it throttle up. I'll check out all of these spots. Thank you for this.

MyFlamingo wrote:

Posting pics of both the throttle and the connections at the motor will greatly help us to help you

Yes, of course. I guess I needed to hear what to focus on first. I spent all last night reading about the engine... haven't had time to dork with the cabling yet but I will. Clearly I'm in the right place here!

OK... so I did some initial checking. Here's the results....

The controls are a Johnson Ship Master. Not original. I think there was a Simplex on the original? Controls are very stiff. I found alot of yard debris / mouse nest inside.

Throttle control lever goes from mid-position to full forward.

The throttle control lever articulates the control on the motor housing (stamped slow-start-fast) as well as all the linkage showed by 63 Sabre. The arm on the top of the vertical pillar moves from parallel with the motor to about 45-degrees (pivots in toward the motor). There's alot of stuff that moves after that. By the time it gets to the throttle lever behind the carb, it moves, but not by as much as I'd expect.

Should I grease the pin on the throttle lever? How about the control cable itself?

What's the range of motion I should expect? Where should I start making adjustments? Thanks for any pointers.

By the time I read your last post it was getting late in the evening. I'll take some more pics tomorrow and we'll work through this.

might want to also check.. some motors have a safty that wont allow throttle to go to far when in neutral.. some only have full movement in gear... not sure if thats the case with your motor or not.. but just something to check..

Vintage is very correct, there is a stop gap measure to prevent the motor from over revving when in neutral. We'll go through the pictures:
To make everything clear and simple we're looking at a 1957 RDS-20 which is probably exactly what you are working with.
The shift lever should be straight up in the neutral position when starting and the little hand lever would also be in "start" position.
The adjustable slide rod will be 'loose', not being pushed by anything and the shift rod would be almost parallel lengthwise with the motor.
Now still with the shifter in neutral the starboard side of the motor the shift lever will be preventing the spark advance from moving forward. (Neutral)
(Blocking movement} [img]http://www.fiberglassics.com/images Hope this helps. PS ignore the paint overspray, still in the process of cleaning this puppy up. Cal /fbfiles/images/P7140012.JPG
Now shift into forward.
The shift rod will swing outward about an inch and allow the spark advance plate to move counter clockwise.
Now at full wide open throttle on the port side, the shift rod end will be pointing directly at the enging block and pushing the silver rod forward to open up the carb lever which you did manually.

And the hand lever will be fully advanced to the left.
Hope this helps. Might be that the little screw stopper on the silver shaft loosened up and is not pushing the linkage forward.

PS> ignore paing overspray. Still cleaning this puppy up.
Cal

Beautiful engine. Mine's ugly comparatively. I'm starting to clean the crud off though...

My gut sense is that almost everything is working the way that you describe, but I'll go and test each step as you described them.

The one thing that seems off is that the shift rod only moves 45-degrees (from parallel to the engine to 45-degrees toward the engine). It doesn't go 90 degrees and point "at" the engine" as you describe. That may be causing much of the problem.

Am I to push/pull on the hand-lever (throttle) or should I do everything from the forward controls? My guess is that it shouldn't matter, but my forward control lever is stiff so there's a different amount of movement from the front than in the back.

Disconnect your shift cable at the motor and then push/pull it into gear. You might have to spin the prop with your foot a little to mesh up the gears.
If everything works as it should with the cable disconnected then you just narrowed the problem to the shifter.

63 Sabre wrote:

Disconnect your shift cable at the motor and then push/pull it into gear. You might have to spin the prop with your foot a little to mesh up the gears.
If everything works as it should with the cable disconnected then you just narrowed the problem to the shifter.

Yes... this worked. The forward controls are very stiff so I disconnected them both so I could focus on the motor.

After some monkeying, everything started to work (initially everything seemed stuck). I can now see how it's supposed to work. When the shifter is up (presumably neutral), the lever blocks the spark advance and the throttle control (on the other side of the motor) won't go past "start". When the shifter is down (leaning forward), the lever unblocks the spark advance and the throttle can move from start to "fast". The throttle shift rod now moves a full 90-degrees like you describe. It looks like I get full throttle as I should.

I can't find reverse. I don't want to force it. I assume it's when the shifter is leaning back.

I also noticed that I can move the spark advance a tiny bit so that the slots don't line up and the shifter won't work right (can't block).

I also noticed that "slow" on the throttle is no longer accessible. I can only go from start to fast (full throttle). And when at full throttle, it wants to sink back a little bit and slow down. When in neutral, it seems stuck at start. Throttling back further would be asking the throttle assemble to go backwards further than where it started.

I can hook up the cables and see if everything still works well, but I suspect that they are not adjusted right. Can you point me to something that describes how to adjust them?

And where did reverse go?

vintagerunner wrote:

might want to also check.. some motors have a safty that wont allow throttle to go to far when in neutral.. some only have full movement in gear... not sure if thats the case with your motor or not.. but just something to check..

I think that's what my problem was... except that it was happening in gear. I just need to sort out why and what to do about it.

reverse is back on the shift lever but when the motor is running things are moving and shifting can occur. With the engine off shifting can be stiff, when in neutral simply turn the prop by had as you move the lever back into the reverse position and it should click right in.
Al

al lockhart wrote:

reverse is back on the shift lever but when the motor is running things are moving and shifting can occur. With the engine off shifting can be stiff, when in neutral simply turn the prop by had as you move the lever back into the reverse position and it should click right in.
Al

Yup... there it is. Smooth motion on the shifter for all three positions now. And I see how the throttle lever moves the notches and prevents you from shifting at full throttle.

Everything seems to work, albeit a little creaky. I'll try reconnecting the forward controls....

Glad we could help work it out. Education will stick with you for next trouble shooting.
I'm still putting my ship master shifter back together so I can't help you out there. Maybe tomorrow, I'll take more pictures. Also will be lubricating the cables.

63 Sabre wrote:

Glad we could help work it out. Education will stick with you for next trouble shooting.
I'm still putting my ship master shifter back together so I can't help you out there. Maybe tomorrow, I'll take more pictures. Also will be lubricating the cables.

I'm not out of the woods yet. I spent all last night reading about cables and control boxes. It's definitely not working right. The Ship Master appears to be a replacement for the original control box and it's not 100%. I'm not sure it's working correctly. It's difficult to move the controls and the range of movement isn't right either. I need to goof with it alot more.

I'm going to oil the cables to get them to slide easier.

I also need to replace the bolt where the shift cable connected to the motor because it was seized so I cut it off (PB Blaster wasn't enough). Flying sparks made me feel better about the situation for some reason.

Family wants to go boating at faster than 2mph!

Can you give us a better picture of the shifter? From your original picture we can't see much. Is it a two lever? I only see one portion of it.
Could be that it's just not put together properly and the forward engine shift lever on the motor is not moving forward far enough to allow the spark advance to rotate. When I assemble mine today I'll take pictures for you and how to set it up.

UPDATE:
Here is the assembly of the original Johnson ship master for that motor. Cleaned, repainted.

First thing I did was extend the cable to it's full length so it would come to the ends of the slides inside the case. Then put a slight coating of grease on both the case slide area and the nylon gear portion of the cable.

Put the fully extended cable back into the case making sure the rack is close to or touching the case slide area

Put the lever back onto the case making sure that the last tooth of the handle gear is in the last tooth of the rack. If this is not done correctly your shift/speed will not fully engage or get up to high speed.

Do this for the other gearset and then put the divider in place and button the whole thing up.

I do have an extra two lever set that might be made to work.
Dunno about this though.

Willing to let this one go, came from a '60. 75hp.

63 Sabre wrote:

I do have an extra two lever set that might be made to work.
Dunno about this though.

This is more like the one that I have. It's a square shoulder model -- not the oval like your red one. It's 2 levers. There;s no toothed rack like the oval model and the cable connectors are different. The insides of mine are exactly like your square one.

On mine, the top trim knob on the throttle side is missing and the lever it should push is snapped off. Someone replaced the knob with a bolt that sticks up 3" (and potentially acts like a rear position lever stop). The front trim (idle) works fine but seemed useless when I tried it on the water. The motion of the cable is so stiff, that if I force it, the steel inner cable forces out the front (overwhelms the pressure on the double-screw stop thingy). I'm going to trace the cable and make sure it's not binding along the route.

It sounds like I should extend the cable, grease both ends (I was going to use general purpose household oil). Close up the box with the lever all the way forward (extended) to calibrate to wide-open? I'm just not sure how to ensure that I get full front-to-back motion of the throttle. Presumably if I pull all the way back, it should kill the motor?

I'll eventually replace for the original model when I see one on eBay or wherever for the right price. I know I need to replace the cables when I do that. The oval one is super sexy. The gray rectangle, not so much.

I spent this morning working on building a guitar and gave the boat a rest.

Can you give us a better picture of the shifter?

Yes... I snap a few more.

BTW, I really appreciate your help. It's immense. Thank you.

There are a few on EBay but prices range from reasonable to ridiculous. I think your controller will work if cleaned and freed up. It would be a good time to check your cables to make sure they are working easy. Disconnect the cable(s) from the motor and disconnect them from your shifter. You should be able to push/pull the cables without much effort.
Others might want to chime in here, guys that are using that type of shifter.
Sorry I couldn't be much help on this part of the subject.

Some better pictures. I have the shifter working nicely (I aligned everything in neutral and connected both ends). I connected the throttle at the slowest setting (both ends) but the cable breaks free when I push the control... something's wrong there.





In the last pic, you can see the bare cable end sticking out. The screws that stop it there are tight. But when I close up, and push the throttle, the cable breaks free (there's too much resistance).

I check the cable run and it's pretty straight forward with no hard loops. I'll disconnect both ends and make sure it slides easily. I'll also oil the bare cable where exposed (and behind the stop). See where that gets me.

Are there some key spots on the motor that I should grease or oil to make sure things slide nicely?

63 Sabre wrote:

Here is the assembly of the original Johnson ship master for that motor.

Another question: is it safe to say that my 1959 Super Sea Horse shipped with that model Ship Master? I want to ultimately (and slowly) restore my 14' Starcraft Arrow to original so I'll eventually want to replace the controls with original one that it would have had. It's clear to me that I'll have to replace the cables as well since they have different ends than the later model Ship Master I currently have (the square gray one).

Can't answer what it came with origianally but would guess the ship master.

63 Sabre wrote:

Can't answer what it came with origianally but would guess the ship master.

Both styles were called ship master! (unless it was sold by Evinrude, then it was called "Simplex", or if sold by Gale, it was called Bo'son(sp?))

The older, curved box was made thru 1959, the square box started in 1960.
One style matches your engine, the other matches your boat!

People in the know say that the square box works better.

The cables are the same for either style box, the ends attach to the inner wire via a hex screw. If you get an old style box, make SURE it comes with the toothed "rack" pieces!!!!