ok, so I pulled the shift mechanism out thinking it was something with that and when i got into it i noticed the gears on the upper drive shaft look good but i can't get the upper gear to slide up to disengage into neutral. I tried to turn the prop by hand hoping it would free up the gear, but I couldn't make a full rotation. I'm thinking the compression in the motor is making it hard to turn, so I plan to pull the spark plugs out to make it easier to turn the prop by hand. I'm also thinking that that upper and lower gear should slide up and down fairly easy or am I wrong in my thinking? What would cause this set of gears to not slide up and down easy? When I drained the lower unit last fall, there weren't any metal filings on the magnetic drain plug.
