Last fall I had a friend who used to work for a marina come over and help me pull my outdrive. We inspected everything and put it back together.

When I went to test the shifting the boat wouldn't go into gear. We pulled the outdrive and the cable looked like it was correctly seated in the latch. We put it back together and still no luck. My buddy just had me adjust the shift cable until it was working correctly.

That just never sat right with me. If it was working perfectly before we took it apart, we shouldn't have to adjust the cable!!!

Yesterday I got the boat out of storage and was going over things in my garage. When I try to push it into forward gear the gaffrig shifter moves really hard. It has never moved hard before. It only actually goes into gear maybe 3/4 of the time. It goes into reverse perfectly.

What did we do wrong?????

Is the engine running when your doing this ? They don't like to shift and you shouldn't try to shift them when it is not running.