86 OMC Lower End Issues

So first off i want to clear the deck and say this is not mine, but my neighbours. He bought it last night and was all excited to go fishing today - its a 21' Cuddy Cabin crusier with a 4.3L 4V OMC Cobra Outdrive, what we didn't count on was the locking switch on the winch shearing off as i backed it down the boat launch, resulting in the boat sailing off the end of the trailer, onto concrete. SMASH!

The boat is fine, the lower unit of the outdrive not so much. we can repair the gaping hole, we have a few ,metalworking frineds and i am a machinist so were going to build it up with whatever we can, or end up buying a new one, they want $3900 for a refurbished one up here in Cold Lake, AB, 3 hours from the closest other marina, i found them on ebay for about $600 - ish, but were going to see what we can do. Im not hopeful but it'll give me something to play with while it rains the next couple of days.

So, heres the damage:



We have removed the sterndrive and seperated it, pulled the prop and stripped it to the reverse gear and pinion gear, we are stumped on how to remove the clutch dog.

I found a link earlier that said to push the shift linkage all the way down, remove it and it should just slide out... well its not , and with it in there theres not enough room to remove the nut holding the pinion gear in place. i tried loosening it and prying on it to give some more space but it wasn't budging.



Any ideas on where to go from here, how to strip everything out of the lower unit would be great. We need to be able to get to the inside of the back of the housing to work the patch in place. We need to remove the remaining gears and shifting components, all we had to work from was a parts diagram of what was actually in there. Hopefully bythe pictures you can see to what stage we got to.

Thanks All!

Re: 86 OMC Lower End Issues

It needs to go to a shop and have a new or used housing installed.

Re: 86 OMC Lower End Issues

You will definitely NEED the FSM. Not a Seloc or Clymer but the real deal OMC factory manual. I also think that several "special" tool are required to reassemble/rebuild a Cobra gear set. Best bet is to find a lower and swap it, NOT try to fix that mess. Good Luck

Re: 86 OMC Lower End Issues

There is a narrow nut holding the pinion gear onto the vertical shaft. It is right hand thread. It will have to come off. Then on the top of the lower take the 5or 6 bolts holding the water housing off. Under it is 4 bolts that you will haveto remove. It is the piece with the 3 orings. Once you remove the 4 bolts the ertical shat will come out. This will allow you to remove the pinion. Then pull on the prop shaft, it will all come out. But chances are that the housing is distorted. Which will cause all kinds on problems.