Alpha One Stuck

Looking for some advice. I noticed my bellows needed replacement on my Alpha One Gen 2 so I went through the whole process. Removed the stern drive, gimbal bearing looked ok but replaced it anyway. Replaced the bellows and hoses, aligned everything with my alignment tool, and now I’m trying to reinstall the drive. Problem is it won’t go on all the way. Seems to stop going on with about 1 inch to go. The 6 bolts are about halfway through the housing. I tried turning the prop CC but so far no luck with that. Finally I decided to pull the drive, check everything and retry, but now I can’t seem to get it back off either. Any tips on what to do with it at this point?

Well, you should have not kicked it on or tried to pull it on with the nuts.
If it will not come off by raising it and dropping it , install the rams, use blocks of wood between the top cap and transom and CAREFULLY activate the trailer button

Good call. You must have seen this before ��. I can give that a shot. I didn’t try to pull it on with the nuts, never had the bolts through the housing enough to be able to try that, but I did give it a kick. Looks like that was a bad idea.

with the alignment perfect you push the drive on to within a 1/8th inch having the control box in full fwd and the shift shoe in the drive facing in a straight line

Well the 2x4 trick worked perfectly. Spent some time really checking the alignment. I finally figured out that my tool was not going all the way in. It seemed to feel like it was, but needed to go another inch or two. Once I figured that out it just took some time to figure out which way to adjust the gimbal bearing. Finally I had it where the tool would slide all the way in and out without much effort. That did the trick. The drive slid right in without much fuss - and no kicking. Thanks for the tips!