Help...My SD31 saildrive won’t go into reverse.

[Privilege]

I serviced my control lever box this weekend and whilst doing so, shifted the saildrive in and out of gear a number of times without incident.

After greasing the control box and putting everything back together everything seemed fine until I tried to put the engine into reverse. Now, even with the control cable disconnected, the gear shift lever on the side of the drive won’t go into reverse. Forward and neutral is fine but when I try to shift the lever into reverse, even with the engine running, it just comes up to a hard stop.

Any ideas what this might be before I start taking it apart?
Thanks in advance.

[skipperpete]

Hi Privilege , so the shift lever on the gearbox is disconnected from the cable and still no astern! There are a few possibilities depending on which shift mechanism you have. On one type there is a shear pin that connects the yoke to the shift lever shaft, that’s the #1 candidate because it just pushes in, not a drive fit.
The worst case scenario is if the detent ball and spring in the shaft that the dog clutch runs on has somehow escaped from its tunnel but I have no theory about how that’s even possible...... but I HAVE seen a shift control with a missing shear pin.
I’m curious to know what prompted you to service the cockpit control.... good maintenance [emoji736]....or a problem with shifting.

[Privilege]

Thanks. I do recall from opening the gear box many moons ago that the shifter mechanism is a brass semi-circle kind of thing. Hopefully this bit needs replacing or some other cheap fix.

The shift control levers were starting to get slightly stiff. Nothing serious and nothing to do with the saildrive, they just needed some TLC and grease. That’ll teach me to do maintenance!

[skipperpete]

I'm hoping for a loose shear pin. The SD 20 and 30 series give very little trouble other than leaking lower shaft seals, I'm interested to hear what you discover.
Pete.