Lower Unit problem

[pmilot]

A friend of mine just purchased a new gear case from a BBC member for my 03 225 HO. It has a little less than 10 hours on the gear case and while out fishing last weekend the gear case engine started to shake a bit while coming out of the hole, once on plane it was fine. Did this twice to we decided to make the 1 mile run back to the marina to put it on the trailer in order to have it looked at.

While approaching the dock he tried to put the engine in reverse to ease up to it but it did not shift into reverse it stayed in forward. Shift cable is broken. When he drained the lower unit oil there were quite a bit of shavings on both plugs, no chunks just shavings. He tried to manually put the LU in neutral but not sure if it's completly in neutral since he can barely reach what is left of the cable. He also noticed that the prop does not currently spin freely. He can spin it but he can here a sound as if the prop was rubbing against the casing but it's not.

It is possible the shaking in the lower unit coming out of the hole was due to the shift cable not fully engaging the forward gear?

If it's still partially stuck in gear, would you expect to be able to spin the prop ? Why is it not spinning freely as it did before ?

Can the cable explain all the problems or am is this likely a more serious lower unit problem ?

Thanks

[ELGIN]

Could have been prop shake and a busted cable.

[gearcaseman]

I would tend to think the cable breakage is not holding the case in gear properly and it's banging in and out of gear under hard start conditions. After you get a new cable installed, you'll know for sure. Make sure you adjust properly before going back out.