Alpha 1 Shift cable Excersizer

A problem with Alpha 1 and 11 outdrive lower units is; with infrequent use, the movement
of the shift cable and trransfer link in the lower unit becomes stiff. This causes the shift
interupter to stall the engine when shifting from neutral to forward or reverse, or when
shifting from either gear to neutral.
I dissassembled the shift quadrant on the engine and could only manually move the shift
cable with difficulty. There was now way I could loosen the action by manual operation.
Repair requires removal of the outdrive leg to re-lube the transfer link bushings. If you have 
a couple buds or a fixture to help manhandle the heavy, unwieildy leg, the job is fairly
easy. Without these requisites, it's a real PIA.
Having encountered the shift/stall condition( for the 3rd time) in my Alpha 1 yet again after
sitting all winter, I decided to circumvent the dissassembly of the lower unit.
I built a Shift Cable Excersizer using a used Bosch wiper motor. It mounts to the 2 pins
in the shift quadrant. This unit shifts the lower unit back and forth through
forward/neutral/reverse about once a second. In so doing, it excersizes the whole
shift system and frees-up the stiff action. After a treatment with the  Excersizer, I can
now easilly shift the cable by hand.
Because the load overheats the wiper motor in 6-7 minutes of operation, I accomodated the
duty cycle by running the Excersizer from a battery charger and switching the charger
with a timer.
The unit uses an Intermatic Digital Programmable light  timer model D717C To operate the
motor for a 5 minute period each hour. 
Since I was unsure if the wiper motor would have sufficient torque to do the job, I did not
pay particular attention to asthetics; just worked out the engineering and whacked it 
together from odds and ends around the shop.
Question/comments
jasonrnorth@ bigfoot.com