I have a 2000 BAJA 272 with a 454 MPI and a Bravo one drive. Boat has been flawless ever since we got it other than some minor things. Saturday we took her out to the lake and went across the lake the party cove. Everything worked fine all the way over there. Got out there and put it in neutral and was going to have my wife put it in reverse to seat the anchor. She went for reverse and nothing was there. I jumped off the bow and tried forward and reverse and there was nothing. We brought to boat home and i pulled the drive thinking the worst. Once I had the drive off I manually shifted into forward and spun the input shaft and the prop shaft turned. I moved it into reverse and same thing prop shaft turned like it should. I got in the boat and moved the gear lever to forward and the shift cable at the back of the boat functioned properly and then I tried reverse and it moved the other way properly. I thought it might be the alignment of the cables so I took the lower shift cable off and manually moved it with the drive back on and it won’t go into gear (this all with the motor running). I am at a loss now. There are several posts on this subject, but nothing that is the exact issue I have.

Any ideas? The next step for me is to order an adjustment tool just to see if that will help at all, but it doesn’t seem like it will.

might be the engine coupler splines

We checked those. They looked fine. When The boat is running on the ears and I put the boat in forward it is somewhat easy, but then when I try to get back to neutral and then revers there is quite a bit of resistance, almost like the cable is getting pushed from the other end.

have you looked back behind the engine while it's running to verify that the input shaft is turning ?

We did verify that yesterday yes.

I feel like if it was a coupler it would have went out on the way over to the cove as the water was glass and we were running really well or atleast shown signs of going out..

Pull the back cap and look at the linkage, make sure the bolts are in the shift rod, etc.

Dick

shift cable.

Jmo, if the adjustment is off just a little, shifting can get pretty funky. I would buy the tool ( cheap ) and start there.

Have you checked the drive internal shift linkage, what the shift cable attaches to, take rear cap off to inspect ?