OK, I've got the crankcase cover loose, but she just dont seem to want to come off... Moves out about a 1/4 inch and hangs up. Do I just keep pulling or is here something I'm missing?

Crank is clean as a whistle... Put a couple bolts back in and gave it a few good hard pulls and still nothing.

Turn the engine over little at the time while pullin out on it and if that dont work, gently tap on the cover with a hammer or screwdriver butt in a circle while doing that.

I bet the gov shaft is hooked onto the gear somehow.

Does the governor shaft move when you try and pull the cover off?

Gonna be funny if he realizes the bottom bolt isn't removed. Lol

Been a long time since I finished up this post. This was a buddy's engine we were doing at a remote camp so we had painfully slow sat internet connection. Anyway, we pulled and pryed until we were pretty sure we were going to break something if we kept pulling. Finally we gave up and disconnnected it from the lower unit and flew it back to town. The service guy said he never seen it before but yes, the govener arm omehow lodged against it. Said he messed with it for awhile and then just decided it was coming off so he pulled it expecting it to break and walla... it finally broke loose with no damage.

And thanks for all the help and sorry for the 1.5 yr followup report.