Symptoms of bad ujoint and gimble and coupler.

[agallant80]

What are the symptoms of bad ujoints and gimble? From what I understand once the drive is off the ujoints may appear to be fine when they are not. If there is suspition of bad ujoints should I just replace them? Also what are sumptoms of a bad gimble and coupler?

 

[tpenfield]

Re: Sumptoms of bad ujoint and gimble and coupler.

Re: Sumptoms of bad ujoint and gimble and coupler.

New boat . . . it should not have any symptoms of bad u-joints, etc.

Anyway, you will hear/feel a vibration & associated noise when you turn or have the outdrive at high trim angles. Gimbal bearings can make a variety of noises if they are going bad. the grinding/vibration is generally more consistent with gimbal bearings, rather than just on turns, etc.

couplers . . . let's not go there.

did you recently check alignment, etc at 20 hours?

 

[agallant80]

Re: Sumptoms of bad ujoint and gimble and coupler.

Re: Sumptoms of bad ujoint and gimble and coupler.

No I never did. I ordered the tool and its sitting in my house. The boat has now I think 23 hours on the meter I put in. This weekend I ran in to a bunch of issues and think they may be related. I started a new thread about those issues last night but no one has posted back on them. I set aside all of my after work time this week to pull the drive and see what is going on. If I can't figure it out then I guess I will have to bring it back to the dealer 300 miles away and hope they can have it ready by June 14th which is my next big boating trip.

 

[Slip Away]

Re: Symptoms of bad ujoint and gimble and coupler.

Unless you hit something, have a ripped bellows or shift boot. You should have no water getting into the outdrive. My last Alpha outdrive was not serviced, except for lube, for 6 seasons.
Never had any problems at all with it. But decided after that length of time, an outdrive service was only helpful for continued trouble free use. On a 2013 B-Liner, you should have years of minimal service , unless something out of the ordinary happened on your last outing.

 

[Don S]

Re: Symptoms of bad ujoint and gimble and coupler.

You do understand that you do not have to take your boat to the selling dealer for warranty work don't you.
The closest dealer can do the work, and Mercruiser pays them.

 

[agallant80]

Re: Symptoms of bad ujoint and gimble and coupler.

You do understand that you do not have to take your boat to the selling dealer for warranty work don't you.
The closest dealer can do the work, and Mercruiser pays them.

Yeah I just figured that out. The selling dealer helped me locate a local guy and explained to me that things that Mercruiser does to make sure that all of their dealers treat each customer the same weather they bought the boat from them or not. I am still interested to know what the deal is but the selling dealer convinced me to bring it to the guy down here. I am going to drop it off after work. There are a few thigns wrong with the boat.

 

[Don S]

Re: Symptoms of bad ujoint and gimble and coupler.

Yeah I just figured that out. The selling dealer helped me locate a local guy and explained to me that things that Mercruiser does to make sure that all of their dealers treat each customer the same weather they bought the boat from them or not. I am still interested to know what the deal is but the selling dealer convinced me to bring it to the guy down here. I am going to drop it off after work. There are a few thigns wrong with the boat.

That's why there is a warranty period on the engine/drive package. To take care of things that pop up on new boats.
I'm sure they will explain to you what the problems were once they determine the cause.

 

[Slip Away]

Re: Symptoms of bad ujoint and gimble and coupler.

True, as long as it is engine/outdrive related. Anything else "wrong with the boat" won't be fixed under Mercruiser warranty.

 

[agallant80]

Re: Symptoms of bad ujoint and gimble and coupler.

I just dropped it off this morning. They said they won't be able to look at it until next week which I was expecting. Hope it does not take too long and they don't come back saying that something that is broken is my fault but only time will tell. I will keep my fingers crossed.