The way a dog clutch works is to slide into spaces in the gear. The forward and reverse gears are both engaged with the pinion gear on the drive shaft. The pinion drives them in opposite directions.The dog clutch is in the middle and when in neutral does not touch either one . When the shift lever is moved to forward, it pushes the dogs against the forward gear. (The motor should be idling at this time.) The dogs will then drop into spaces between the dogs in the gear. The patent was on how the clutch is moved. OMC used a yoke coupled with a right angle lever to transfer the up and down of the shift rod to the forward & backward motion of the dog clutch. Scott Atwater used a hollow prop shaft with a step tapered cam on the end of the shift rod engaging the spring loaded dog clutch with a rod through the center of the prop shaft. Mercury Used a hollow shaft but rotated the shift rod to change gears. I believe the Ted Williams outboard uses the Scott system. (It went from Scott to McCulloch to Chrysler.) Check out the Chrysler service manual for an idea of how it works.
