Re: outdrive maintenance bellows gimble alignment etc
What do you do when you pull your drives?
It's called
Preventive Maintenance (PM for short), it's done to find and correct minor problems before they become major expensive problems.
1. You can check for water intrusion into the bellows. If not corrected, it will destroy the bearings, ujoints, yoke in the drive and water will get into the drive as well.
2. Check to make sure the front seal of the drive is not leaking oil. This is very good to know on the Alpha I and earlier drives without a gear lube reservoir. The leak could and will cost you the upper gears and bearings if not noticed.
3. Allow you to check engine alignment. If a mount should fail, this check will let you find the problem before it destroys the coupler and you have to pull the engine out to replace it.
4. Lube the coupler splines. On Mercruiser drives prior to 91, the couplers were not greaseable from inside the boat. The only way to grease them was to pull the drive and put grease on them. Without it, the coupler will fail.
5. Allow you to grease the ujoints if they have zirks.
6. Allow you to grease the gimbal bearing and clean up all that excess grease.
7. I have always recommended a bellows change to my customers that keep their boats in the water all summer to replace at 5 to 6 years. It's cheaper than having it fail.
