I had the outdrive serviced just a couple weeks ago for this season by the dealer removing it and greasing the joint and inspection. I FINALLY got a chance Sunday to use the boat and the damned thing won't go forward or reverse!!! It starts and stays in neautral and that's it! What did they do? I assume they either pinched the shift cable, bent the yoke or didn't hook up the cable right at all. The drive is an OMC King Cobra and 454. Obviously I dropped it back off at the dealer and will call Tues AM and bit$h them out about screwing up my only day I have had to myself in months!

i've had that problem with an alpha drive before. If it has an interuptor switch (i think cobras do) it probably needs to be adjusted. It momentarily cuts the engine and allows the drive to shift. If its not adjusted properly it doesn;t cut the engine and nothign happend when you try to shift.

Chekc yoru shop manual it shodul tell you if tah is it or not .

i would say it's a cable problem...probably never hooked up right where it connects to the drive.

does the throttle/shifter move back and forth when you attempt to shift it?

Is there any resistance on the throttle/shifter if it does move?

Hey hi-perf-2000:

No, it does move towards reverse but doesn't move forward! When moved to reverse it still doesn't do a damned thing! I thought you had to have the shifter either in forward or reverse when re-installing it, or is that just with the Mercriser?

I had a King Cobra ( cone clutch version)
off a few years back, there is a pin that
connects the drive shift linkage to the
transom assy shift linkage.
My bet, this pin fell out when reinstalling the drive,
or they broke the transom assy cable when they removed
the drive, because they forgot to remove the above mentioned
pin, when it came accessable ( lets face it, these drives aren't
that popular, and some of the mechanics aren't that familiar
with them)

Let us know the results.