Help! 225 Pro XS won’t go in gear.

[Bigwheels]

Mercury 225 pro XS serial # 2B688502.
Motor has about 140hrs Just did my 300 hour service due to age (including impeller)
Drove 5 hours Friday for a club tournament. Put the boat in the water Saturday and it went into reverse and backed it off the trailer just fine. Turned motor off till blast off then started back up and motor would not go into gear. Pulled the cowing off and you can see the linkage working but it isn’t doing going into gear either direction. Merc monitor had an alarm for shift actuator and engine went into guardian mode so I shut it down and fished off the trolling motor all day. Took it to a buddy’s about an hour and a half from the lake and pulled the lower to see if I screwed something up while doing the impeller even though it seemed like a pretty straight forward job. Only thing I found was the lower was in reverse and the actuator was in nuetral. Moved the post in the lower to put the prop in neutral and put everything back together. We fired it up on the muffs and it went into gear just fine both forward and reverse (checked several times)and the alarm on the mercury Monitor was no longer showing and throttle seemed to be normal. Stayed for the night and drove back to the tournament the next morning only to put in and have it not go into gear either way again. Need some help I’m really scratching my head. Is there wires that can get pinched or a connector that can rattle loose or have a bad connection when getting bounced around on the trailer? Seems strange that the actuator would work intermittently? I have found other posts talking about a recall or TSB but my serial number seems to be after those effected. Really hoping I don’t need an actuator and wondering if their is a way to test it or anything I can check before taking it to a servicing dealer. Thanks for any help or advice you can give!

[Sleepy111]

There aren’t any wires to pinch or plugs to come loose on the lower where you had it apart. The only connecter for the actuator is at the bottom of the power head in the front right in the middle. It’s easier to get to if you pull the 2 upper lowers off where the cowling latches to. It’s gray with an orange seal, mine was anyways. Chances are your actuator is shot, the recall fixed a lot of them but there were some that didn’t fall in the recall but still ended up with defective ones. How old is your motor, is it out of warranty? Depending on how far oow, if it’s oow, you might get lucky with your dealer getting it covered by mercury since it’s a known problem for a few years now. You can replace it yourself in a couple hours if you have to do it but there is a process for 1 step that you have to pay close attention too.

[Bigwheels]

I believe it’s a 2020 and I’m not sure that it has any warranty left on it. I know it had an extended warranty of some sort when I bought it but I haven’t looked for my paperwork yet. Working some long days so haven’t had a chance to dig out my paperwork. Thanks for the info though. I tried to do some looking around online but there isn’t much info out there that I could find. I’ll take a peek at the connector but I can’t imagine that came loose since it’s nowhere near anything I took appart.