Mercury Mark 55E control head reversed

[bbradb]

Still working through issues on my 55E. One relatively minor one is that in order to move forward with boat, one must place lever in notated reverse position which means pushing lever to the aft or rear. Likewise when backwards motion is desired lever is pushed toward the front or bow. Since my control head is green and motor is maroon or red, I’m assuming this head did not come with motor. Perhaps this is the problem. Anyone experience this?
Bruce

[eltoquad]

You’ll have to mount controls on other side of boat or if cables are long enough bring them into controller from the other end of unit.

[fastjohn]

It will not matter which side of the boat they are mounted.

[Anonymous]

Your lower unit is not in sync with the shift lever in the bottom cowl.

[dave-bernard]

XR55 is correct drop the lower and reinstall it correctly. that is the correct box for that motor. 1 914 310 7086.

[bbradb]

Thanks again, for all the responses. I am going with “dropping the lower end” and correcting the hookup down there. Removing lower unit presumable means undoing these 2 nuts correct? Is this also where I would find water pump impeller stuff?

[bbradb]

Pix above doesn’t show nuts I’m talking about until you open it up.

[dave-bernard]

2 more look under the cav plate for 1 nut and 1 allen screw in the exhaust snout.

[bbradb]

All who replied. Thanks and I want to report that we were able to fix the Forward/reverse issue with control head acting backwards. In addition to the brass coupler being off a tooth, we also tweaked the setup inside the control head. This was a major encouragement for us. Hopefully we have documented this procedure for any future issues here plus we now feel pretty comfortable dropping and reinstalling lower end (LE). I am going to start a new thread with additional issues.

[Ed@deathwish-outboards]

That control box came in two colors black and green The first were black those were 1954 and probably early 1955. Then came the green ones which were replaced I think about 1962 with the single handle white one. They were also with or without the electric start feature. It has been a while but I think a lot of the innards were reversible. I am also thinking there might be a difference in the name on the black control box. I just remembered the first ones were not Quicksilver. They were KAMINC / Fond DuLac Wisconsin. I have seen pictures of this one in red but never in the wild.

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