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Inspect
your drain and vent screw gaskets. If they are torn or even worse missing,
replacing the 2 gaskets may be all you need to do to keep the water from getting into the oil.
Use a screw driver and clean all of the old gasket material from inside of
the 2 holes and also from the backside of the screws. Replace with 2 new
gaskets ( we use crazy glue to hold the new gaskets inside of the hole ).
.
.
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One
option you do have now is, with the drive completely drained, you could replace
the lower drain screw and use a pressure gauge
in the top hole to fill the drive with 20
pounds of air and look for any leaks.
.
.
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If
the gaskets are ok, remove your propeller and check for fishline behind the
large propeller thrust washer. Fishline will actually get behind this washer
and pull the rubber seals completely out of the lower gear housing carrier. It may
be necessary to remove the carrier to replace these 2
seals, or you can use our prop
seal driver kit.
.
.
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If there
is no fishline behind the prop, it may be necessary to remove the outdrive
from the boat to inspect inside of the big boot for presence of water. On Pre-Alpha
and Alpha, place the gear shift in full forward and remove
the drive.
.
.
-
Inspect
the big boot on the back of the boat looking for cracks in the boot, water
in the boot or rusty u-joints. There is only 1 oil seal behind the u-joints
and it is only designed to keep the oil in the drive, it will not keep water
from flowing backwards into the outdrive oil. If water does appear present
in the big boot, replace the boot and the oil seal behind the u-joints ( an
upper retainer wrench will be required ). Also inspect the gimbal
bearing and u-joints, replace
if necessary.
.
.
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If there
are no traces of water in the big boot, you have worn seals inside of the
drive.
.
.
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Another
option you have now is to separate the upper outdrive housing from the lower
housing. Once this is done, you can plug the 1/4 diameter hole ( item
"b" in photo ) which
connects the upper & lower oil passage, and again use the pressure gauge
to pressurize the upper and lower housings separately to determine if the leak is in the upper or lower housing. Resealing half of
a drive is easier than doing the whole thing. If you can now determine which
seals are bad, replace as needed.
.
.
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If you
cannot determine which seals are bad, it may be necessary to replace all of
the seals.
.
MerCstuff,
llc 
