Goofy Outboard Motor Feature

[Ufatz]

My brother has a new 6hp Nissan four stroke outboard. It is a great little motor; starts on first pull, moves small boat long nicely and is miserly with fuel.

BUT it has one feature we cannot understand: you cannot tilt the motor up unless it is in forward gear! We have wracked our brains trying to understand the engineer's logic in designing this feature.

Does anybody actually KNOW why the motor is built that way??

[boatfixer]

The reason it will release in fwd is if you hit something like a rock or log, etc, it will be able to move up rather than stay locked down causing more damage to the engine or transom. Why did Nissan not install a manual release? good question. Others have and have not as well.

[marine_man]

Some smaller mercs are like this as well. The other reason is that if it wasn't locked down in reverse the motor would pull itself out of the water...

marine_man

[Ralph Wiggum]

I was gonna say, my dad has an older Merc 9.8 HP that is the same way.

[Ufatz]

Okay....okay. I get the thing about the motor flying up when you hit something....,most outboards have been like that forever. I guess what was driving us nuts was trying to tilt it up when we had it in the tank running if for a few break in hours. Common sense told us it would tip up neutral....OR there would be a little release lever someplace.

Clever little folks those outboard motor engineers. As I said earlier, it is a great little totally dependable motor.

Thanks fellas.

[broken_line]

nothing more anying than back trolling with the motor kicking up all the time..