Re: 1962 Johnson Shift Shaft Seal Replacement
I'm a little late on this thread, but I did this on my 1960 40 Johnson about 2 weeks ago. I bought a 5/16 steel rod at the hardware store, turned a 1/2" section down to 1/4 dropped it in to the hole from the top (WP side) and had to beat the daylights out of it, but it finally came out without any damage. I had a spare lower unit to practice on, and learned that you cannot remove it if the rod won't pass through the hole in the casting. We used a crappy 5/16 alignment punch and ground the tip to 1/4, knocked it out only to find the bushing jammed on the end of the punch (need square clean edge from 1/4 to 5/16 to catch the bushing edge cleanly), but was able to knock the punch back out of it with a smaller punch from below. The turned 5/16 rod worked perfectly. FYI, I found how to make this rod in another thread here on iboats. Sooooo glad I did! I'd have never figured that out on my own.
We used 2 screw drivers and a couple small sockets for leverage to remove the shaft seal under the WP. The WP channels kept the sockets in place and they gave a good prying surface. This one was very tough to get out and was pretty destroyed in the end. The seal in the WP and prop shaft came out with little effort.
John