I am rebuilding and resealing the lower unit on my late father in laws outboard that was on a little fishing boat he and his dad had. I'm doing it for my brother in law who is clueless on working on stuff. It wouldn't shift into Foward. I pulled the lower unit. Not only were the screws loose the shift rod came out of the connector while I was working on it. The connector had been mashed to not allow the shaft to go all the way in so the bolt would capture it. Those of you who work on at least OMC motors know what I'm talking about. I got it to where it had Foward and reverse by adjusting the shift handle took it on the lake and I still didn't like how it was going into gear, plus it had water in the lower. So i opened it up. There was wearing the clutch dog and Foward gear where it engages. These parts are getting rare and expensive. They sell an aftermarket set but it's over $500. I found NOS OMC stuff on eBay and he told me to get it. As I told him your getting the work for free so if it was me I would. I am putting in a seal kit, new bushing on shift shaft, new clutch dog, Foward and reverse gear, new pivot screw for shift linkage cause the old one someone stripped out and I had to chisel in new groves to grab it with a screw driver. I had already rebuilt the carburetor to get it to run right. And of course it will get a new water pump but that's no big deal, it has to come out to do this other stuff anyway. And I will take out the failing pulley steer system and convert it to teleflex type cable steer. The boat is a 25ft StarCraft V bottom. All this boat work has me ready for summer and going out on the lake! Any other boat people out there? I know Horkn is!
I’m a boat person, can’t wait, the crappie will be spawning soon. Then it’s into summer time! Thats a big boat for that motor, and thats a big project. There’s always the satisfaction of doing something like that, especially every time you’re out in it.
Yea it says on the plate it can take a 40HP. It was probably bought as a cheap out the door combo just to get fishing. With just me it will only hit 21MPH My boat we go out on as a family all the time is a 24ft Crest with a 60HP Evinrude. It's not fast either...it's a cruiser. Enjoy the lake play off of on the edge of the lake .
We practically live on the lake in the summer time. Cruise around, pull the grandkids on tubes, and me too, gotta pass the torch on. We anchor in coves, and one of the favorite questions from the kids is "can we go to shore?". We'll swim (float) to shore, and look for fossils, skip rocks, or the kids will bury themselves in mud. LOL It's good family time.
Pulled the shift haft pushing. Popped the seal out where the drive shaft goes in got everything apart waiting on parts to flow in. All that's here so far is the shift shaft bushing and impeller.
Along the lines of rebuilding, we've owned our boat for 21 years now, it's been a really good boat, although a little on the small side and under powered. It's a 19' with a 4.3 efi. I've always winterized it myself, every time, just draining the water from the block, lower the outdrive and take the battery inside. I did that for 20 years, and last spring when I de-winterized it, it started great, then went downhill, fortunately I was looking at the motor when all of a sudden water started spurting out of the dip stick.... I shut it off immediately, and couldn't believe what I just saw. I checked the dip stick and it was up to the top and milky... I was in shock. I let the oil drain for about 4 days, and did a lot of research. I took the throttle body and intake manifold off, and fortunately the damage was limited to a cracked intake, and I shut it down fast enough to not cause any other damage. I ordered a new manifold, put it all back together, 3 oil changes and it was all good. It cost me about $500, but could have been MUCH worse. This was all spring of last year, and it ran great the rest of the summer. I know exactly where I screwed up, I jacked the front of the boat up too far before I drained the block, the water needs to drain toward the front of the engine for the intake manifold to drain.... a hard lesson learned.
There's a boating forum I belong to that's great, a lot like this place, with a lot of knowledgeable and very helpful people. Their help was invaluable, and helped me dodge a bullet big time. The original Mercury service manual calls for the intake manifold bolts to be torqued down 30 ft lbs, that was a big time error on Mercury's part, the bolts needed to be torqued to 11 ft lbs! Mercury sent out a service bulletin correcting that, and fortunately one of the forum members mentioned it to me. Sure enough I found the service bulletin. The intake gasket is plastic with rubber ridges around the ports, if I had torqued it to 30 ft lbs, it would have cracked the gasket and I would have ended up right back where I started, with water in the block. Forums are a great resource!
Yea I'm a member of two at least. Started visiting more for the season on one of them and answering questions. I always seem to get active on them in the summer during boating season and when working on stuff. Oddly enough I haven't made a post there about this!.
Cool project. All I did all winter was work on boats. Actually spent last Tuesday fishing out of a boat WITHOUT a motor. Pure pleasure If anyone has time I'd be interested in boating forum links. I only reference TheHullTruth.com for the most part. Always looking for other resource's.
I use them a lot. I also use one thats like marineengine.com and the one I'm a member of and on the most is iboats.com. it's an old forum and been around for a long time. I have been a member for over 15 years there. It doesn't seem as active the last few years. I think it's cause some of those others have popped up. I also know three of the old times with decades of knowledge on boats have passed and were very frequent contributors. I use to love the place, I still do. It has good posters still but is a lot slower to respond. I think part of the problem is its attached to the retail sight and it's kind of hard to find fron their main page. If your search a question bin Google you can be lead to the threads easy that way. Lots of cool projects and restos over the years. Most of my knowledge was learned from there.
