1971 Merc 165 Engine Alignment

The rear of the engine is sitting about 1/8" to 1/4" too low...the bar will not even go into the splines and I can see it hitting the top of the splines.

At first I thought the rear engine mounts were bad. They looked very good when I inspected them and I lifted the rear of the engine up with a jack and then compressed it and saw no sinking of the rear mounts.

I have the spacers and fiber washer installed exactly as they came out and to the Merc. Manual specs.

When I jack the rear of the engine up I can get the alignment bar to go in 2"s and figure the rest if front adjustment.

I actually went so far as to stack some washers under the stock spacer and this also worked, but seems like a rig...

One thing that really bothers me, when I had the transom assembly ready to put back on there are oval holes on the inside engine part of the transom assembly. I tried to center it as much as possible, but because of these oval holes you could have the rear of the engine off up to 1/4" and the Merc manual says NOTHING about these!

HELP!

Re: 1971 Merc 165 Engine Alignment

The inner plate pilots on a spigot on the outer; inner and outer are self aligning. Sounds to me like rear motor mount issue. 'nutcase

Re: 1971 Merc 165 Engine Alignment

Do the rear motor mounts press out of the flywheel housing?

What confuses me is that when I had the rear inner transom plate bolted to the transom very loosly I could move it up and down 1/8" to 1/4". ALL of the holes were oval.

I am also reading about people needing to "set" the gimbal bearing? I installed my gimbal bearing with the gimbal housing off the boat. Is it possible I didn't get this lined up? I thought it was to go in and seat solid against the gimbal housing.

Re: 1971 Merc 165 Engine Alignment

Update:

Rear motor mounts are fine as are rear spacers. I got the alignment tool to go in 1 1/2" with the rear spacers in the factory configuration. I had the engine WAY too high. Problem now is that I am almost as far as I can go down because I built my front mount a little bit taller than it was from the factory. I am getting marks on the top of the alignment tool so that means I need to go down more?