Greasing gimbal bearing

[Rbryan94]

Hi,
I need some feedback on the gimbal install I did today on my 88 Alpha One Gen 1 outdrive. I have a 30' Chris Craft with twin 4.3 's Here is my issue. I removed the old bearing with no issues. The grease hole is not on very bottom (6:00) It's more like somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00. I marked the gimbal bearing where the grease hole was and made sure the tolerance ring was split over the grease hole. I cleaned the surface of the drive with lacquer thinner and sandpaper and installed the bearing with an installation tool until it bottomed out on metal. I could feel it go all the way home. So far so good until I greased the bearing. As I pumped grease through the fitting I watched grease come out from the tolerance ring, more where the hole was but grease did come out all the way around the outside of the tolerance ring. I though grease would eventually come from the inside of the bearing. I greased my other gimbal bearing on my other 4.3 Alpha and grease did come from inside of the gimbal bearing. I don't want to put this back together and have an issue when it's in the water. Any feedback on grease and gimbal bearings would be very helpful. Thank you

 

[Bt Doctur]

Re: Greasing gimbal bearing

did you by chance get a non-greaseable unit?

 

[Rbryan94]

Re: Greasing gimbal bearing

Well I assumed because the gimbal bearing had a grease hole that it was greaseable

 

[NHGuy]

Re: Greasing gimbal bearing

deleted

 

[Bt Doctur]

Re: Greasing gimbal bearing

The tolerance ring has a hole but the sealed bearing does not. You would need to remove just the bearing from the carrier to check it.

 

[Bt Doctur]

Re: Greasing gimbal bearing

See post #4 in this link http://forums.iboats.com/mercruiser...ives/new-no-grease-gimbal-bearing-590609.html

 

[Rbryan94]

Re: Greasing gimbal bearing

I just checked the oem#s the bearing DOES have a grease hole. Can I remove the bearing to check the alignment of the grease hole and use it again? If I remove it , do I need a new one?

 

[Fun Times]

Re: Greasing gimbal bearing

It's not really recommended to reinstall a hammered out bearing! Slowly pulled out maybe. Some have done it successfully though. Either way you'll need to pull it out and you may know once it's out.

Is the dot in the 10.00 o'clock position? It should be.

Good luck.

 

[Rbryan94]

Re: Greasing gimbal bearing

Yes the dot is in the 10:00. I ordered 2 new gimbal bearings mercruiser brand! The ones I have are from China. I'm not comfortable leaving them in. Sometimes you get what you pay for. Anyway I have to believe the grease has to get to the actual inside bearing not just tolerance ring. I'm going to do it over with OEM bearings and see what happens. This was my first shot at doing this, maybe I screwed it up the first time. I'm more comfortable doing it again. Thanks for the help.

 

[Fun Times]

Re: Greasing gimbal bearing

One of the most important things to be sure of is that the bearing is all the way in or the bearing will not grease up properly if it's greasable. While installing the bearing, you can usually tell by the different sound effect that you should be able to hear once it's all the way in.

 

[Rbryan94]

Re: Greasing gimbal bearing

Thanks for the input. I have a pretty cool install tool . I can feel it going in and the sound changes too when it's all the way home. I just figured that if I have to pull the bearing out again I might as well replace it with a new OEM one. I appreciate you input. I'm always open to any helpful ideas.

 

[hoot]

Re: Greasing gimbal bearing

When installing or removing an bearing, you want to press or pull on the ring that has the press fit. If you don't, you can brinell the rings or rolling elements and damage them. I put my bearing into a freezer the night before in a sealed bag to shrink the outer ring so it slides in better.