AShipShow
Lieutenant Commander
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2016
- Messages
- 1,785
Hey guys,
Just a bit of quick background:
It's been quite a while since I've lurked around here since I finished up my 96 Bayliner restoration... Well, I got the itch again and have bought a 28' cabin cruiser with a Mercruiser 496 Mag HO paired to a Bravo 3. I'm starting to dig into the drive to see what I'm dealing with. The drive had a decent bit of corrosion, especially around the bearing carrier. I also found the u-joint bellows must have been leaking because the u-joints were rusty and the gimbal bearing stuck to the shaft when I removed the drive. Those items have already been addressed (I removed the u-joints and stuck bearing and cleaned everything up and are ready for re-assembly).
I was able to remove the bearing carrier and cleaned things up before reinstalling. When I drained the drive oil, there were no signs of water or metal debris and the color seemed pretty normal and didn't smell worse than usual. After reinstalling the new bearing carrier, I wanted to pressure test the drive to make sure I didn't have any other leaking seals before I went any further.. Currently its sitting at 9psi and hasn't budged after 12 hours, so I'm feeling hopeful.
One concern I have is, when I pressurized the drive, I rotated the input shaft (yoke) both ways and wiggled it around and felt fine, but when I did this to the prop shaft, specifically the inner prop shaft with the prop installed, I noticed that it felt very clunky, like I could feel the gears meshing. I wouldn't say it was hard to turn, but it definitely wouldn't continue to spin if I gave it a good spin. Am I over concerned with this? or should I throw another grand at this and buy the bearing retainer tool and completely disassemble the lower?
Looking for any feedback from you B3 guys that know how the prop shaft should feel normally.
Just a bit of quick background:
It's been quite a while since I've lurked around here since I finished up my 96 Bayliner restoration... Well, I got the itch again and have bought a 28' cabin cruiser with a Mercruiser 496 Mag HO paired to a Bravo 3. I'm starting to dig into the drive to see what I'm dealing with. The drive had a decent bit of corrosion, especially around the bearing carrier. I also found the u-joint bellows must have been leaking because the u-joints were rusty and the gimbal bearing stuck to the shaft when I removed the drive. Those items have already been addressed (I removed the u-joints and stuck bearing and cleaned everything up and are ready for re-assembly).
I was able to remove the bearing carrier and cleaned things up before reinstalling. When I drained the drive oil, there were no signs of water or metal debris and the color seemed pretty normal and didn't smell worse than usual. After reinstalling the new bearing carrier, I wanted to pressure test the drive to make sure I didn't have any other leaking seals before I went any further.. Currently its sitting at 9psi and hasn't budged after 12 hours, so I'm feeling hopeful.
One concern I have is, when I pressurized the drive, I rotated the input shaft (yoke) both ways and wiggled it around and felt fine, but when I did this to the prop shaft, specifically the inner prop shaft with the prop installed, I noticed that it felt very clunky, like I could feel the gears meshing. I wouldn't say it was hard to turn, but it definitely wouldn't continue to spin if I gave it a good spin. Am I over concerned with this? or should I throw another grand at this and buy the bearing retainer tool and completely disassemble the lower?
Looking for any feedback from you B3 guys that know how the prop shaft should feel normally.
