Well, the season ended and I took her home, I only had some cosmetic things to do and I wanted to rewire the boat. Odds and ends really. I didn't put her in the garage because I honestly didn't want to take the engine off. She doesn'the fit in the garage without doing so. I have to pull the engine and lower the trailer jack all the way and she fits with about 6 inches to spare. Instead, I wrapped her up with a tarp and built some wood supports to support the cover when it snowed. I learned a valuable lesson that year. I would guess everyone knows this one but just in case, I will put it out there.
You should drain the lower unit oil in the fall. If you have water in the case it can freeze and Crack the case. I had never had that problem. Even when I first brought the boat home, the oil was clear and no sign of water. Well, not that year. The spring came and I uncovered her, brought her down to the garage and started on the yearly maintenence of boat and trailer. I got to the lower unit oil and took both drain/fill screws out and out came maybe an ounce of oil. Even worse, it was brown and sludgey. I was not happy. I had the boat up on a hill half stuffed in the woods so no looking for oil leakage there. If I had put it in the garage I would have seen the leak sooner, damn. Luckily, there wasn't enough water oil to Crack the case but it could have happened very easily. I got lucky with where the leak was. I decided to at least find the leak. Wasn't sure if the case was junk or anything really. I hoped for the best and filled the case with oil to flush it, and hopefully find the leak. It wasn't too long at all when I started seeing oil seeping out from behind the prop. I pulled the prop, and saw an aluminium casting which slipped over the out put shaft and was obviously removable. It wasn'the painted like the rest of the area around it. The oil was coming from the bottom of this piece. If it had leaked from the top, I would probably have a cracked case. I went to my computer and looked up a schematic of my motor to see how it might come out and what parts I would need to fix the leak. I think it was called the output shaft bearing housing. I saw two bolts held it in and it had two seals, two o-rings and there were two bearings pressed in there as well. I ordered everything for the housing and went down to pull it apart.
Two bolts came out and the unit slipped free. It seems the o-rings had failed, I had bought everything so no biggie. I was playing with the unit, cleaning it up and figuring how to get it all apart. I was spinning it on my finger using the needle bearing because I thought it was cool. I'm a pretty simple guy lol. The front bearing spun freely but the back bearing was all but frozen. It would move but not happy and free like the front. I had suspected something was up with the lower unit for the last year. It would make this high pitched noise at a certain rpm while accelerating. It would only do so at about 1500 to 2000 rpm then go away. I had my brother in the boat with me driving while I had my ear on the engine cowl to see if it was the engine but the engine was just humming while the noise was present so I surmised it was the lower unit.
Anyway I was looking at this thing and realized that there was no way I was getting the bearings out. I called on my super hero machinist buddy once again to assist with the boat. Glad I did. He said he had to make a tool on his lathe to extract the bearings and another to repress them. He wasn't happy with me. It seems the bearings are pressed in from one direction and you need to get through one bearing to press out the first. The piece came back shiney and new. He complained about the stench of it and said he had to put it in his engine boil tank. He naturally stuck around for the install to see where this PIA went and how it was supposed to work. We checked as best we could for any scoring or heat blueing on the shaft and gears without pulling it apart and saw nothing unusual so she went back together. I did flush it several times until there was no trace of water. Ran it in a garbage can of water and flushed it again. All good.
I think i was mentally spent from the experience and just called it good for the season. I would rewire it next year (this year). She ran great all year but a new sound appeared. This was a similar sound but only happens when coming off the throttle. I talked to my buddy and he thinks it is probably engine related. I am going to check it out in the next few weeks but don't have high hopes for the old girl.
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