It would not go into gear at all either direction. Friend reported that the boat was doing fine all day then went to leave a marina and had no control over the drive. When I got there to help we ran thru the usual so of coupler failure, broken shafts etc and nothing stuck out. We swapped the drive with a spare not touching anything else and the boat has been alive and well since. I'd like to see the clutch pix you have to compare. This was a higher hour drive so anything is possible.

Did you possibly shear the quarter inch socket head bolt connecting the shift fork to the shaft or the lower shift arm?

I feel better that it wasn't one that I sold you

I'm going to dive in further tomorrow when I get to my friends shop. I'll update with what I find

the very first simple test to do before tearing into it is see if the all the shifter assembly is working correctly. Take back cover off and shift the drive manual with some needle nose plyers front side of drive

then rotate propshaft to see if you go into gear and or rotate propshaft while manual shifting the outdrive. I would pull top cap off to see if you can see any damage / metal and or overheating as well

did you have any impact damage related issues here ? Sometimes with SS props they look fine but the weak link is the internal drive components.

you will need OEM special tools to completely tear the outdrive down and the correct service manual would be a very wise choice as well. I have all of that covered. Just saying

Top, well used but fine operating clutch.
Bottom, wasted clutch that would not engage in either direction until about 1500 RPM, and then WHAM, you were moving.

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Shouldn't you be out driving the Choo Choo train delivering packages LOL

Worked on the drive and took some pix ( I'll post later). Clutch looks a lot worse/smoother than the ones you posted. Thanks for sharing those pix

Since you said the oil is black you need to re torque the pinion bearings on the drive shaft ,

Update... Sleeve connecting the upper and lower shafts had cracked on bottom end. Guess when power applied it just spun vs grabbing. Never noticed till I split the upper and lower. Dumb me I guess. Never would have guess it was broke. Tore the vertical shaft splines pretty good. They weren't twisting though.