I bought a 1999 bayliner w/ an 3.0 mercruiser,it had a broken starter bolt, had that fixed and replaced starter along with rear starter bracket to avoid anymore broken bolts because of torques from starter. The first few times I started it on the tralier after this it starter fine,ran it for a while ,then it in the water ran for a little bit ,then died (bad gas) but when trying to start it sounded like starter grinding on flywheel ,after going through this process twice and even thinking the starter was bad and shimming the starter, got to the point where i inspected the gears on the starter and teeth on the flywheel, everything looked fine but now wont even turn over goes right to bad grinding. Even tried to manually turn engine to get to different teeth on flywheel but same thing. I did notice when turning the engine that there was a hard spot when turning so i took out all spark plugs and still has ahard spot when turning.Can someone tell me if there is something internally going on in the engine or something like a bad crankshaft bearing causing the bind.I have read a few post about similar noises and all the other mention a new starter or shims, But I have done both , a boat mec. looked at it and said its inside engine but before i replace it I want to be positive its not and easy fix. Could it be a problem with the outdrive?
