I have a 99 Mercury 200 EFI 0G803451. I have a Quicksilver 3000 Control & Hotfoot throttle. To summarize, I should start by saying I did change out the impellor recently. I performed the check per manual to make sure my linkage was correct by shifting into gear and turning flywheel to watch my prop direction. Everything checked right. I have taken it to the lake 3-4 times with no issues. I fishing a 3 day tournament last week and on the second day, I had a problem of getting out of forward. I messed with it some. I finally got it shifted into reverse but motor was still stuck in forward. After a few try I got everything into neutral. It didn't give me any more issues the next 2 days but I did notice it was harder to push the control into forward gear. I assume it was my cable. Today, I pulled the shift cable off the linkage and it moved very freely. I did notice, I could manual shift into reverse and the prop would engage, put it back into neutral and the prop spin freely, but I couldn't manual shift it into forward enough to make prop engage. Can someone give me an ideal on a starting point to check. I'm thinking I need to drop the lower unit and check my shift shaft but it seems to work fine in neutral & reverse. I also notice that the shift cable retainer was not in the locked position when I took the cowling off. Thanks for any help or advice