Hello, John Talley here with Boats.net, and sitting before you in the stand is a
Mercruiser stern drive. This particular one is a Bravo 2X diesel, and it has a
pretty severe problem. It actually has a large crack on the lower unit casing as
you can see here. So what are we gonna do? Well we're gonna clean off a large
section of table on one of my work benches, remove the top section, and then
break down the lower unit. We'll determine what we can and can't use, and then get
it rebuilt. So if you're ready I'll go, open up my toolbox and we will dive into
this, so let's go.
Step 1: let's bend our tabs back, get that retaining washer. Two of them. Let's see
if she'll come loose now. I don't know who put that on, but um, that's a little scary.
Basically the only thing holding that on was the retaining washer. Now what I'm
about to do now, you wouldn't do because you run the risk of cracking the casing,
but ours is already cracked so I can get away with this. Next we're gonna pull
both the vent and the drain plug-- drain slash fill plug-- and this ought to be
interesting. That'll tell us whether or not we've got any water intrusion up
into the the housing itself. Now you should be able to actually see the bolts
that I'm removing. On the other side it was a mirror image: one going up, and then
two coming down. One there, and then one about right here, and then you've got one
hidden all the way back right in front of the sacrificial anode. And they are
all sixteen millimeters. So we've got our six up front taken out, and then we're
just gonna reach up in here and get number seven. As I was saying, white dust.
I'm just glad it came out. Now let's see if they want to separate. Yeah.
Let's see just how much torque it's gonna take. I'm betting not a lot, but hey, I've been
wrong before.
Yeah, it's gonna be one of those times I'm wrong.
She is probably really encrusted in there, so we're gonna get a bigger
breaker bar. We'll try it with the air, and if that still doesn't get it? Then
we're gonna get out the torch and heat up the casing. And at that still doesn't
get it? Then we have to drill it out and knock out the retaining ring itself.
We'll start with this, see what happens, see if it holds, then adjust accordingly.
So what we're gonna do next is grab a regular slide hammer, see if we can
attach to this point, and get that other side to pop loose. Let's see-- and she's
probably try to spin on me-- but let's pop it. It's holding on for dear life on this
half. Of course this side is literally broken away on the bearing carrier. What
I'm going to do is get a cut off wheel and cut reliefs here, here, here, and
hopefully that'll be enough where it will finally pop it loose and get out of
there. If we have to cut more reliefs to get this to break out, then that's what
we'll do.
From the looks of the inside of the internals, I think they're still useable.
We should be able to get away with just replacing the bearings and seals and of
course, housing and the carrier. And be able to use the the shafts, the pinion
gears, I mean everything else. Let's remove the pinion gear bolt next, and it is a 14
millimeter head below, and then we have to have a special tool to hold the input
shaft spline. And then a thirty two millimeter socket up top on the tool. There she
is. Get our plate removed. Of course we'll be reusing the plate later in the game, but
that is when we go back to check the play in the pinion gear to see if we
need to adjust our shims-- which we probably will. Now with our clamp plate
removed, we still need to get the o-ring, a spacer, any shims that are in there
along with a tab washer. Now once those are out of the way, the drive shaft will
lift out and then the pinion gear will drop out below.
There we go. So let's see if we can get in here and get that o-ring out.
And the thrust ring. There she is.
Other than having a really big crack in the housing, the the drive is actually in
pretty good shape. So I've got all the pieces that I'm actually going to use
already removed, but if you did want to reuse your bearings, I want to go ahead
and show you how to pull the races so you can reinstall yours in the new
housing. All I'm going to use is just a regular slide hammer puller. Just make
sure it's got a set of claws that are opposable and can reach down inside of
the diameter of the of the races themselves. And let's pop them out. There
you go. Now we're going to remove the bearing race for your front bearing.
We're gonna use the same setup with our slide hammer and just pop it out.
Same scenario as up top. You're gonna see the race itself and then whatever shims
that were required to get the correct clearance. There was just one. Well
alright guys, that's pretty much all we're gonna extract out of this
particular casing because you're not going to reuse needle bearings-- or any
other bearings for that matter-- once you've knocked them out. Or at least I'm
not going to. So now that I know what I need, I'm gonna head in, order up the
parts that are gonna be required, and then we'll start putting this back
together. Well listen, if whatever you need for your boat, why don't you come
see us at Boats.net and we can get you taken care of. If you have any
questions or comments about what we've done so far, why don't you leave it in
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