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Mecury outboard won't go into gear unless the prop is manually turned

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Sl70man

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I have a Mercury Optimax 150HP XR6 around the 200 era. We pulled the lower unit to change the impeller. Now when we reinstall the lower unit it won't go into forwar or reverse unless you turn the prop manually. We've tried installing it with the lower unit and shifter handle in neutral and we've tried it with shifter lever in forward and the lower unit also in forward. The shifter lever is very difficult to move back in fourth unless you turn the prop and then it goes into gear smoothly. We dropped the lower unit again and tried to shift it in gear manually with a pair of pliers and it's doing the same thing. It won't go into gear unless you start to turn the prop. Is there anything we did wrong while changing the impeller and removing the lower unit. It should have been a simple fix and everything should've gone back together easily. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you
 
We tried that as well and it's the same response. It went into forward OK and then when we tried to put it in reverse it becomes very difficult to move the lever backwards. With fear of breaking something we did not pull back on the lever any harder. If we were to go back to the prop and turn it by hand it would've gone into reverse easily and then back into neutral but then we would have problems going into forward again unless we turn the pot by hand
 
Sl70man said:
We tried that as well and it's the same response. It went into forward OK and then when we tried to put it in reverse it becomes very difficult to move the lever backwards. With fear of breaking something we did not pull back on the lever any harder. If we were to go back to the prop and turn it by hand it would've gone into reverse easily and then back into neutral but then we would have problems going into forward again unless we turn the pot by hand
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. I should make a correction on this post. We did not try to turn the prop to get it to go into reverse with the engine running. We only did that with the engine off. With the engine running it with only going to forward and neutral.
 
With the lower unit off , which way are you turning the shift shaft to get nuetral.-----------Clockwise or counterclockwise ?
 
That is the wrong way !----------Counterclockwise to find nuetral.------More counterclockwise to get reverse.----At least that is the way it worked on many older motors.-----An Optimax XR6 ??--Serial # of your motor ?
 
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From neutral we turned it counterclockwise to go into forward. From forward we turned it back clockwise to go back into neutral and then a little bit more clockwise to go into reverse. Then counterclockwise to go back into neutral and so on. Model number is 1150454WD and serial number is 0T067054
 
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One thing I did not mention was that as I was having trouble getting the lower end to bolt up I was having a hard time getting the drive shaft to fit in. I had read about turning the fly wheel to turn the gear in the motor could help to align the drive shaft gear, so I did make a bit of a rotation of the fly wheel a few times. Also, when turning the prop in neutral for the first time it was making a bit of a grinding noise. There was some debris (weeds) in the pro housing area. Cleaned that out and it never made the noise again.
 
Never dry shift a motor especially a Inlne or Xr4/6 series s it preloads cable..What you posted is NORMAL if engine is not running.
 
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