Back at the beginning of July our Mercruiser Stern Drive Alpha One Gen II had a serious failure at the upper unit where the gears ate themselves. It appeared that the oil had gotten low. My only suspicion about how the oil got low was maybe from hitting ground hard and possibly damaging one of the lower unit seals and letting the oil drain out. Anyway ...
In mid July we replaced our with the SEI 116 Upper and Lower Units.
A few weeks ago, we went out on our boat and were running at mid throttle, ~2500 RPM and were half way to out destination when a terrible and loud noise came from the stern drive area. I put it in neutral immediately checked it out and found that the unit would still go into gear (forward and reverse). We were a ways from help, so I also found that if I trimmed her up just a little that the noise was reduced considerably. We limped her back at idle speeds. The noise didn’t get any better or worse. Last weekend, I double checked the lubricant level and it was fine. I flushed the engine and the noise is still there. I am not sure what this could be … if I had to guess, it is either the u-joint or the coupling bearing. What do you think and what should I do?
Oh yeah and we followed the break-in process to a tee. Very strange. We weren’t even running her hard.
In mid July we replaced our with the SEI 116 Upper and Lower Units.
A few weeks ago, we went out on our boat and were running at mid throttle, ~2500 RPM and were half way to out destination when a terrible and loud noise came from the stern drive area. I put it in neutral immediately checked it out and found that the unit would still go into gear (forward and reverse). We were a ways from help, so I also found that if I trimmed her up just a little that the noise was reduced considerably. We limped her back at idle speeds. The noise didn’t get any better or worse. Last weekend, I double checked the lubricant level and it was fine. I flushed the engine and the noise is still there. I am not sure what this could be … if I had to guess, it is either the u-joint or the coupling bearing. What do you think and what should I do?
Oh yeah and we followed the break-in process to a tee. Very strange. We weren’t even running her hard.
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