If you have never done the job before, it would be a lot easier to do with the complete drive off the boat. You should also be pulling the drive yearly to check alignment, lube the splines, lube the ujoints, check the gimbal bearing lube and clean up excess grease, and inspect the bellows for water and a possible gear lube leak.
thats the thing, it has maybe 3 hours on it last season since i put the drive back on and re sealed everything, but i didnt change the impeller, and it is buggin me now and i would feel alot better if i changed it, but i didnt want to pull drive back ff again if i didnt have to.
I attempted this awhile back by myself..not impossible but dang close.
You will work 2x's as hard by pulling just the lower than you would yanking the whole unit.
If you pull just the lower..You will need another set of hands, a rolling floor jack and laundry list of inventive swear words.
I recommend to my customers to replace the GEN II impellers (like you have) every 3 years 4 max to be safe. I wouldn't worry about it, and change it this winter when you do the rest of your winterizing.
No, no gasket...What you do have to be careful of is the oil passage o ring on the starboard side of the lower unit. Loose this and you'll most likely have prolems.
I do water pumps all day long by just pulling the lower. It's not hard at all.
Raise your leg to about 45 degrees and drop the lower (put shift into forward gear) This is easier with less worry about the lower being in gear when tilted it will slide in to forward gear.
Just take some needle nose visegrips and pinch off the reservoir line so it won't all drain out. Make sure you dont disturb the quad ring. and unhook the darn speedo pick up so you don't break the fitting. Just squeeze, twist and pull to remove.
i've gone after the impeller both ways, removing the lower only and removing the whole drive.
imho it's a lot easier to mate the lower to the upper on the bench. a one man job.
when doing the lower only and leaving the upper on the boat. i find it best to do that with two people. + i agree with cheapboatkev. you'll learn some new swear words and i find it much more painful to reassemble the lower to the upper while the upper is still on the boat. but it is doable...
by reading another thread i have found out that i probably just fried my impeller in the lower unit of my alpha gen + drive....i ran it without feediing water through the muffs for probably less than a minute because i was too worried about tuning the carb at the time....i am a pretty mechanically inclined person and want to learn how to do the maintenance myself....soooo, by doing the impeller change for the first time could i do any irrevocable damage to the drive if i dont exactly pull the drive correctly...like some of the things mentioned in this thread....i really want to do it right the first time so my boat wont be sitting in the driveway all summer....about how much is it gonna cost me for the kit...and are there any threads that could walk me throught it...i searched and that is how i found this thread....sorry for the long post just trying to save so money and gain some knowledge....thankyou
i've gone after the impeller both ways, removing the lower only and removing the whole drive.
imho it's a lot easier to mate the lower to the upper on the bench. a one man job.
when doing the lower only and leaving the upper on the boat. i find it best to do that with two people. + i agree with cheapboatkev. you'll learn some new swear words and i find it much more painful to reassemble the lower to the upper while the upper is still on the boat. but it is doable...
i've done it both ways as well. didn't find removing the lower only to be particularly difficult, and thought that getting it back together is significantly easier than aligning/mounting the whole leg with 1 person.
