About a month ago I noticed a water leak coming from the bottom of my starboard exhaust manifold. It was more of a seepage type of leak but never the less it was a leak that needed to be addressed. Once I took it off the motor along with the riser I did see some very big corrosion inside both pieces. To save some serious dollars in the tune of $350 I decided to go aftermarket instead of OEM. When I ordered these parts I was told they were direct replacements for the Mercruiser OEM parts. I even ordered the gaskets and new mounting bolts. The first thing I noticed was that the thickness of the mounting bosses for the exhaust manifold varied from one another by 1/4 of an inch on five out of the 8 stainless steel mounting bolts rendering 5 of my OEM bolts too short. Off to my local Ace hardware store to get 5 new bolts that were 1/4 inch longer. I then started to mount the new riser onto the exhaust manifold and the 4 hole patterns were off by about 3/8's of an inch making the riser useless. I ended up having to use my original riser in its place. Even the quality of the exhaust manifold was no where close to the quality of the OEM manifold. If I ever have to do any more engine work I will now be more than happy sticking with genuine Mercruiser OEM parts and paying a premium price. I even had to modify and cut my OEM exhaust heat shield to make it fit because the thickness of the manifold was slightly higher than the OEM manifold. After 4 hours of wrenching I finally got everything back together and eliminated my water leak. This leak obviously was occurring for the previous owner but he did not take care of it. It also took out the starter which also needed to be replaced. Nothing like having salt water dripping onto your starter?
