On a recent trip on the river, my 75hp Mercury Outboard 2-stroke lost power as I went to full throttle. Of course, we had to hang on as our wave blast caught up with us from behind shortly thereafter! My motor was still running and I had gear selection, but no throttle response. I knew I had lost throttle linkage somehow. I removed the cover to find the metal throttle linkage loose at the one end. In retrospect, I have had this happen before years ago. I put it all back together, and it worked. Not seeing a good fix or a definite cause for the problem, I ordered 2 of the linkage retainers online and installed them. They seem to be a good deal tighter, yet without impeding the ease of travel or range of motion. I hope this fixes the problem. I am hoping that my retainer clips were just aged and worn allowing for the failure. I ran my throttle through its ranges of motion (forward and backwards) several times to make sure I didn't need to adjust the stops to decrease the throttle cable's range of motion at its extremes and everything seemed fine.
Has anybody else experienced this problem and have a better suggestion for me than what I have done? Looking over the set-up, I am not entirely thrilled with the design as it looks like a straight linkage could have been employed rather than an offset one but I'm not an engineer. Additionally, the front pivot that the linkage hooks through seems like it could have been designed to more smoothly align with the roller that it rides on the front side, or that a better roller design could have been employed, but again, I am not an engineer. I was looking for causation, and am hoping these clips (though not cheap for $0.05 of plastic) will have me set for problem free running for years to come.
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