Well, I'm trying to help a friend out who has an early 2000's 25hp Mercury. It's a tiller motor, 2 stroke. We went out fishing last week and the motor was fine, hit something in the water as some point, but shut motor off, checked LU and prop, all seemed fine, so we carried on. Used both F and R, but not much since we were in an idle speed zone. When we got back to the ramp, he went to back the boat up to load it on the trailer, motor went into R just fine, then stayed there. It will rev up and RPM's increase and R seems to work fine, but it will not come out of R. The tiller handle has the gear shift and throttle built into one motion. I pulled the hood off once it was out of the water to take a look, but I did not see any problems. I checked that the handle is moving the cable as it should, and you can see the cable move 1 direction, and try to move the other, but the tiller handle itself won't go into R, it just goes into F and N, although the LU is still in R. I checked the movement of the linkages and don't see anything loose, disconnected, broken, etc., up to the linkage under the carb. My thought would be the clutch dog (may not be the correct term for a Mercury), but the thing that is in the LU that selects the gear based on the linkage moving. I know it's a somewhat common problem with Johnsons/Evinrudes, but don't have much experience with Merc's.
One last thing I almost forgot, the engine goes off the tiller handle position I can assume, since it will let him start it any everything, despite the LU being in R.
One last thing I almost forgot, the engine goes off the tiller handle position I can assume, since it will let him start it any everything, despite the LU being in R.