I had my 1989 OMC cobra (5.7) outdrive maintenanced over the weekend. This was to involve outdrive removal to grease u-joints, grease gimball bearing, inspect bellows. Also, replace waterpump impellor and housing and change lower unit oil. Well to start this mechanic knew nothing about cobras as the service manager had show him where to fill the lower oil. Then the service manager left. I watched this mechanic do the whole job. He did not use any gasket seal or RTV on the gasket for water pump nor the gasket for the upper housing that mounts to transom bracket. I supplied all the parts (Sierra Gasket kit and Sierra waterpump housing/impellor/gasket kit). He started to leave out the 2 o-rings for the drive shaft and I asked him about it and he said "those are extras for another application". I insisted he find out for sure and he asked the manager and the manager pointed out they go on the drive shaft. Then he tried to reuse the oil dipstick plug plastic washer, which was brittle. I insisted this be changed and the shop didn't even have one. He put an o-ring instead. This mechanic had no care in the world for doing a quality job. Even fired up a cigarette while he was changing the oil. At $90 per hour, I expect professionalism, quality, and care in doing a job. This was a large service dept at a local lake large marina. I know I am rambling, but my questions are as follows:
1) Is it ok to use an O-ring instead of a washer for the oil dipstick plug (on top of upper housing)?
2) Is it ok to not use any gasket sealer/RTV on either gaskets mentioned above? My concern here is leakage into the drive shaft cavity, so I am particularly concerned with that gasket.
3) Also, before I took it in, it had a very slight vibration in drive at idle which would intensify when I did hard turns left or right. This has to be the u-joints due to it getting more intense while turning. After the work above, put the boat in water, when I motored away from the shop the vibration was actually worse. I thought greasing the u-joints would solve this. Are the U-joints bad and would greasing them cause them to vibrate more? They did say the U-joints looked ok, but I don't take anything they said seriously with the quality of work I saw.
Final comment: It is very sad that these days it is very hard to get any service at a reasonable rate and done right the first time with quality work. How difficult can this really be?
1) Is it ok to use an O-ring instead of a washer for the oil dipstick plug (on top of upper housing)?
2) Is it ok to not use any gasket sealer/RTV on either gaskets mentioned above? My concern here is leakage into the drive shaft cavity, so I am particularly concerned with that gasket.
3) Also, before I took it in, it had a very slight vibration in drive at idle which would intensify when I did hard turns left or right. This has to be the u-joints due to it getting more intense while turning. After the work above, put the boat in water, when I motored away from the shop the vibration was actually worse. I thought greasing the u-joints would solve this. Are the U-joints bad and would greasing them cause them to vibrate more? They did say the U-joints looked ok, but I don't take anything they said seriously with the quality of work I saw.
Final comment: It is very sad that these days it is very hard to get any service at a reasonable rate and done right the first time with quality work. How difficult can this really be?
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