On Monday Moonshine was lifted out of the water for her annual maintenance. The first job was to drain the oil from the sterndrives and to remove them from the boat. Even though her previous owner had paid engineers to do sterndrive maintenance for him, this proved very problematic as we concluded that all the mounting studs that secured the sterndrive had not been greased prior to assembly along with the steering tap that releases the helmet. We returned home deflated with a potential headache of not being able to remove them in order for us to replace the bellows.
After mulling the problem over that evening a simple tool was made to aid the removal. This comprised of a threaded steel rod with a nut at each end to draw the stud free of its mount.
The pin which secured one of the trim rams to the sterndrive was the most troublesome one and appeared well and truly stuck. Hammers, long screwdrivers, grips, WD40 etc everything was used to help gain a small amount of leverage to get behind the pin to prise it out. Eventually it was removed, but not before cursing Moonshine with the threat of selling her!
As you can see above there is no grease residue on these at all which tells us none had been applied as is advised in the Volvo Penta manual. Various split pins were also missing from within the drive. Very bad practice on behalf of the engineer that serviced these sterndrives, apart from the cost of employing such engineers we are firm believers of if you want a job doing properly... do it yourself!
Both gear cables were removed as these are original and show signs of wear. These have been measured to enable replacements to be ordered.
The anti foul which we ordered online was delivered yesterday whilst we were out and kindly taken in by our neighbour, let's hope today is as productive a day as was yesterday.
To just do the bellows Liam finds it easier to remove the gear box rather then taking the whole drive off.
ReplyDeleteWe took it off this time as it was being painted but normally he just takes the top off.
we didn't do anything with ours last year as we had paperwork from 2012 indicating the bellows had been done. Hopefully it should be a lot easier next time if all the studs and pins are greased. We may take them off again at the end of this year and have them refurbished so they will be like new, as we don't think they have been as well looked after as what Luro's were.
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