Hi everyone I recently purchased a powerquest 260 legend sx with a 496 mag HO. Drive is bravo 1X. I’m looking for some help diagnosing an issue as I had to get towed in today.

The second time out with the boat I was running back to the marina at around 3500 rpm. I had some higher pitched noise all of a sudden and then I lost some power and had higher engine RPMs. My wife said she smelled some burning rubber briefly. I powered down and turned off the motor. My engine temps were fine, no alarms. I looked at the engine and the serp belt was fine. No oil noted in Bilge. Engine oil looked fine. Possibly some black dust near transom which was new. I eventually started the boat back up and the engine fired right up and idled fine. The odd thing is my gaffrig shifter will not move out of neutral. There is a lot of resistance. The throttle will move fine.

Im planning on pulling the lower unit plugs and checking oil. Most likely an engine coupler? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Sounds like a textbook case of the rubber in the coupler disintegrating . Bear in mind that the splines in the coupler can also go and in that case there's no smell of burning rubber or bits of rubber dust thrown around .
Not entirely sure about the shifter though , but if the coupler has totally failed and the power shaft to the upper outdrive is not turning at all then essentially that would be acting like the engine is turned off and you can't (shouldn't try to) shift it .
To fix this the engine has to come out .

Classic signs of a failed engine coupler to me...

1. Burnt rubber
2. Black soot or rubber debris near around transom
3. engine runs fine
4. shifter isn’t working because for cone clutch in drive to shift properly it needs to be spinning. Your drive isn’t spinning...because the coupler has failed

bad news is engine has to come out. Also need to make sure nothing in drive like gears failed to cause the coupler to fail. Couplers usually fail for a reason.

I think every time that I’ve dealt with a rubber coupler failure, it has been due to the lower front engine mount height adjusting nut dropping down.... if you have a gap between the top nut and the engine mount, that’s what’s going on, the root cause is that the locking tab that is suppose to secure the nut isn’t bent in far enough to hold it in place

Thanks for the help. Very bad news and to add insult to injury I drained the outdrive this morning to find very tiny metal specs in the oil. The top gear oil vent plug had large metal flakes on it. I’m assuming the gears are shot. Am I looking at the need for a whole new outdrive here?

Unless the case is junk, it shouldn’t need a whole drive