Volvo Penta saildrive S120S-E will not engage forward (cables are ok) in French Polyn

[pedal88]

When reversing the boat in an anchorage yesterday, the boat suddenly did not want to shift into forward.

I have troubleshooted the cables, that are ok, but I have disconnected them and done the rest of the troubleshooting by moving the shifter manually.

When engine is not running:
It is easy to shift the shifter by hand, to forward (shifter rotates counter clockwise from neutral position), neutral and reverse (shifter rotates clockwise from neutral position).

When engine is running:
The shifter easily shifts to reverse gear and back to neutral.

Some times the shifter physically moves without much force to forward, but there is no «gear shifting sound» and the forward gear is not engaging. When increasing RPMs, gear appears to still be in neutral, and the boat is not moving.

Other times the shifter do not want to move to forward position, even when applying moderate force on it.

A few times the shifter moves to forward and the forward gear engages. The very few times this have happend during troubleshooting, it seems to only have happend when shifting directly from neutral to forward after starting engine. If shifting once to reverse, it will never shift to forward.

Some info: I have had SAE 80W90 non.synthetic oil as gear oil for the last 30 hours of engine operation. There appears to be leaking some levels of engine oil over to the gear oil as the level have increased slightly, and the oil is definately black and not milky/grey. I replaced the oil with 75W-140 synthetic

I have removed 2 shims from under the adjustment bolt, and there are 4-5 more.

What can be the problem and the cause of it?

How can I continue troubleshooting and/or fix it?

Can I damage anything by removing more shims?

I am at an anchorage in French Polynesia, so dont want to do something that can result in worsening the problem.

PS! The picture (if inserted correctly) is not of my actual shifter, but some pictures I found from a prior thread at the forum.

I dont understand how I upload a photo, but I found one on the web

()

Hope anyone have any ideas

[Wotname]

I can't help you directly however there are a couple similar threads on CF that may be helpful.

https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ems-67639.html
https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...em-250113.html
https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...l-87198-3.html

There might be others, try using the custom google search function in the drop down Search menu.