At various times while coming to an area or after unloading the boat the gears lock in the forward motion. I've had it looked by two master mercury mechanics and they don't find anything wrong. One said it is probably due to the hotfoot and the rpms not being below 1,000? I've paid attention to this, ensured the hotfoot is back all of the way and the rpms are at the lowest possible but it doesn't make a difference.

What I have to do is trim the motor up and then make small changes while trying to get it out of gear.

Has this happened to anyone and if so, what has been the remedy?

Thanks
Dan

Sounds to me you might have the shift cable in a bind somewhere, since you mentioned trimming up or down will help this. There in the rigged loop of cables and wires along with your fuel hose, as it makes a nice slow loop from the boat to your engine or it could be in a bind in the rigging compartment or bilge.

That, or maybe need just a little swipe of Grease under the hood on the shifter linkage. I would figure those guys you had check it would have covered that though.

I am also guessing the gear oil is good clean and full. The other thing would be the adjustment of the shifter, if it's going to far into forward, this can cause it not to come out of gear, this would also be really sucky if those two guys didn't check and adjust the shift when you had this checked. I figure they did. I will say one thing here though, don't mess around with this if it's not adjusted right, quickest way to knock the square shoulders off the shift dogs and in this case if going to far into forward, you can wreck the reverse dogs, if it's not adjusted correctly.

So I am back to the shift cable maybe in a bind with this appearing to be trim sensitive. That or your shifter and/or shift cable is going out. Usually don't see that, most times you push and pull on the shift cable to free it up, sync and link for adjustment and a small amount of Grease on the linkage under the hood and your good to go in less than an hour, if we take the time to really look this rig over...

Thanks for the input. Yes, I'm assuming it was reviewed correctly but one never knows. I'll look into the areas mentioned. Thanks again.

it is not going to shift correctly until your rpm s are about 650 it has too much load on it at 1000 rpms.