Greetings, and thanks to all those who have posted so much helpfull information. I recently purchased a 1988 four winns freedom 160 that had a pretty much destroyed gimbal plate. I removed the drive, engine and eventually the gimbal plate to replace it with a newer gimbal plate from a 1991 four winns with a 4.3 engine. Everything pretty much matched between the two gimbal plates, however the newer unit used a larger bolt it seemed so I drilled the holes in the 3.0 exhaust pipe to accept a slightly laprger bolt that seems to fit the newer plate. After reassembling all the parts the boat seems to do great on muffs so I drug it out to the local lake for a quick check. I dropped it in the water and parked the truck/trailer and by the time I returned to the boat it was doing its best to sink so I grabbed the trailer and yanked it back out of the water. After pulling it to the top of the ramp I looked under the drive to see where the deluge of water was originating and saw it pouring out of the exhaust bellows. My question is this, is the exhaust opening any different from 3.0 to the 4.3? Another possibility is that the replacement bolts I used are a tad long and rather than actually tightening they were bottoming out and left a gap, they felt tight and the pipe certainly seemed solidly mounted to the gimbal plate. A third possibility seems that from the bit of reading I was able to do regarding the exhaust attachment to gimbal heli-coils were used and maybe they had been removed from the plate I purchased thus my assumption I needed larger bolts and I need to re heli-coil things to make this work. Additionally the only seal between the pipe and gimbal seemed to be an orang seal, I see mention of a gasket elsewhere on the web but cannot find a seal in diagrams other than the o ring. I can certainly create a gasket if needed but thought I'd ask here prior to going too much further. I appreciate all the information gathered here and was able to complete the steps taken thus far by relying on the shared wisdom here. Thanks
