08 mercury optimax 90 hp hard shifting

[Boaterrook]

Hello! New to the forum but glad I’m here. Hope I’m posting this in the right place but I have 2008 mercury optimax bass tracker. I removed the shifter to carpet that panel and like an idiot didn’t mark the shifters original position. While reinstalling everything I just kind of guessed where neutral was based on if the prop would spin freely or not. Now after having everything back together I noticed it’s hard to shift into reverse but I never tried it with the boat not running before. is that normal or did I mess something up? I was planning to run the engine with Some earmuffs but wasn’t sure if that can cause damage by putting it in gear while out of water. I just don’t want to have to go all the way to the lake to test things out. Any advice would be great thank you !

 

[Texasmark]

The reverse gear is a cog (male) slot (female) arrangement having vertical sides vs the sawtoothed "over run clutch" used with F gear. R locks in place and once engaged, engine off, to move the prop in either direction you will turn the whole drive train...crankshaft included. F gear also has a locked up gear train for CCW rotating by hand with the engine off, but in CW rotation, the gear and cog is sawtoothed and the prop rotates, moving the clutch dog up and down over the highs and lows of the rear of the F gear's saw tooth.....doesn't matter if the engine is running or not for F gear engagement.

Manual states that forcing (the remote control) into R without the engine running, can damage your shift linkage if cogs on the rear of the shifter clutch dog in the LU and slots on the rear of R gear are not perfectly aligned. Correct method to shift into R, when the engine is off, is a 2 person operation with remote cables attached: One person slowly moves the remote control shift lever "toward the R position" while a second person simultaneously rotates the prop. When things line up the remote control lever will move fully to the R position.

 

[Boaterrook]

Dang hope I didn’t damage anything, is it a bad idea to run the motor with earmuffs and put in reverse to check? I wasn’t sure if it will damage anything by not having the prop under water

 

[Texasmark]

Not at all, just keep the rpms down, I use a couple thousand as an upper limit, shifting into gear only at idle) ensure your tell tale is squirting water while running and give the prop time to stop before you shift to another gear.....with the engine running. You may get some "clunking" when the prop shifts into gear as the idle is faster than it will be with the LU submerged and the prop has no water resistance to assist the prop hub in absorbing the shift shock.