Re: looking at grady with 79 omc, yes or stay away?
You have to make the final decision, but those types of drives have not been built since 1985. While there are a lot of drive parts available, some of the larger housings are not. They are aluminum and they do wear out and corrode away. Your only choice, if you have a bad one, is to find a good used one (if you're lucky).
Common parts like shift cables are big time expensive. $400 to $600 range.
Another problem, OMC went out of business in 1998. No more factory parts or trained techs.
It's even getting tougher to find OEM manuals, the aftermarket manuals are junk.
On the plus side according to stringer owners, the drive tilts up higher than newer OMC or other manufacturers drives. For what ever good that does, you can't run them full up.
