transom assembly & gimble housing

[Island]

This was brought up in the Bravo forum http://www.sterndrive.cc/vbforum/showthread.php?t=841 but I'm also curious why no transom / gilmble assemblies (in my case for alpha one gen one)

It would be a nice option to be able to get the full setup new and corrosion free.

[Tech Support]

We have looked at it a couple of times, and it never seems to make sense to invest in the tooling. They are currently available from the OE and there are some guys that buy packages and split them up, so the prices are usually pretty reasonable. If we did decide to do it, we wouldn't make the older gen one, only the Gen II.

Tech Support

[Island]

I guess the volume probably isn't there because swapping a drive is something most people can do on their own but swapping the transom assembly probably 90% of the time is done by a mechanic who is probably already tied into the OEM parts distribution.

Looking around the best deal I've seen so far is $1900 for a gen II transom assembly which includes two trim cylinders too. My first thought looking at it is that while it's a good deal of metal, the percision is probably a lot less than is required for the moving gears and seals of the upper and lower units so I thought maybe it wouldn't be too difficult. Maybe I am way off though.

It would be nice and neat if when redoing a boat you could get all new SEI from transom to prop all together as one new pacakge.

[Tech Support]

http://www.dougrussell.com/Products/...ry=5&Brand=100

This is where I usually see them the cheapest.

Tech Support

[Island]

Just a note that I ordered two of those from Doug Russell. They were easy to deal with and generally I'm happy, though the way they packaged them for shipping was very poor (just paper buched up, no oem foam or packaging and free to shift in the box in transit) and when they arrived both had a dozen scratches through the paint to bare aluminum, both onto the mercury sticker on the top and especially on the trim rams.) So I had to paint them first thing, but other than that, I'm happy with what I got for the very low price. If you could pick them up vs. having them shipped though, I'd go that way without question.