Volvo penta 280 outboard help
So I bought my first boat it’s old and it was cheap and I’m trying to get it ready for the water but I’m having trouble with reverse latch. To my understanding the latch should only engage when the boat is in reverse with the outdrive fully lowered but the components of the latch were all moving rather difficultly so after disassembling it and removing the spring(#8) in the photo I finally got the lock collar(#11) to lower as it was stuck in the up position and the rod that should be pushing it when the boat is put into reverse would just go right underneath it resulting in the reverse latch never engaging in any throttle position even with the outdrive fully lowered but now the reverse latch is engaging automatically when the outdrive is lowered and it releases automatically when I raise it again but my concern is if I were to hit something in the water going forward with the latch engaged it would cause catastrophic damage as the outdrive would not be able to move freely.
I’ve spent a lot of my time doing research and watching videos and can’t seem to find any solutions and I don’t know where to go from here, hopefully someone here can give me some advice.
Sorry for the long post and thank you for reading