I have been helping a friend with some transom work on his boat. It has been a few years since the boat has been on the water due to a broken shift cable. We replaced the cable and now the drive will not fully enguage in reverse. The forward shift works fine. I have set the cable to 6" from berrill to pin hole as the merc manual states. The interesting part is that when I remove the cable from the shift bracket and manually pull it all the way out, it still will not fully enguage. With the outdrive off I was able to shift into reverse by turning the shaft at the front of the drive.
I am starting to believe that some of the drives internals may be worn causing the shift travel to be insufficient. Any suggestions??

Is your forward cable need adjusting may not be getting enough throw to move lower all the way

Do precisely what the Merc manual says...a half turn either way will make things silly....take your time, set it up and dial it in....I had a similar problem in the past.
It was very annoying...
However, DO make sure no other parts are bent or misaligned...
c

It was a while ago but I think I had the same issues... and it dealt with putting the drive on. I had to have it in foreward and have someone keep slight pressure on the prop but this was a pre-alpha.. that is if I remember right..

Thaks to everyone for the replies as I was stumped by this one. I ended up fixing the problem by removing the cable and taking a small wire brush to really cleaning out the bell housing where the cable threads in. After re-installing it, the brass fitting seemed to thread in a bit further with much less resistance. Now forward and reverse seem to be working well.

In the manual it states that to be sure that no more than two theads are exposed when tightening the screw in cable fitting to the bell housing. Maybe there were more threads exposed than should have been and when You cleaned it up it alowwed the fitting to thread down further?