mittens

Get the boat ready for the motor to be lifter out. like everythign. chain ont he motor. Find a buddy that works somewhere with a fork lift, and take it there one nice afternoon, and LIFT it out. put in the back of the truck and go home, park boat back in pole barnd and use cherry picker to lift motor out of truck to you garage floor.

dereknkathy

hang a 30 dollar come-along from the cherry picker boom. pick motor up to high as you can. stack pallets under motor. drop cherry picker boom down and lift motor out. if you cant get it all the way out, you can propably get it out of the way enough.

OPIE272

Because I could not get access to a lift to pull an engine I replaced a coupler without pulling the motor. Was not fun. But can be done.
I took rear mounts off and unbolted front mounts from brackets on stringers.
Pulled back of motor up and went to work. So the transom assy would be the same.
Just the bottom nuts on transom plate will be tough to reach.
It SUX, but if you have to, go for it.
When motor is tilted, be EXTREEMELY careful not to let the motor fall off the motor mount brackets so the motor falls in the bilge.

sprink58

I just removed both engines from my 255 and I can tell you...it's worth it to find some where to do this. I shudder at the thought of trying to do what you are thinking.

See if a rental place near you has a" tilt and tow" or mobile hoist. Pull the boat out of the barn and pull the engine. Put the engine on a stand in the barn and then do your work. Even if you have to do it over 2 weekends you are better off.

Hope this works out for you.

ezrizer

I know this is an old post but it's the only one I found on this specific subject. After dreading the replacement of two transom assemblies all winter as I just didn't feel like setting up an A-frame, removing hatch, removing exhaust, etc, etc. I finally started working on this over the weekend. The first day I had the drives off in an hour. The second day I climbed into the bildge for the first time in 4 months to disconnect a few things and as I started looking around I figured out it wasn't that hard to reach the 8 nuts holding the assembly on. Taking my time and taking advantage of my 38" sleeve length I had everything ready to pull the 1st assembly in about 90 mins and the assembly came right off. The boat was a fresh water boat since new (1992) so the corrosion on the inside was minimal and perhaps I just got lucky but it didn't take much effort to remove once loose. I'm assuming Merc changed some things over time as my assembly had 4 studs, 2 aluminum carriage bolts on the bottom and two additional bolts from the inside for the two fasteners 2nd from the bottom rather than 8 studs like the current style. After figuring out the two bolts that were 2nd from the bottom were bolts I left them in place once fully loosened in case the transom assembly tried to drop. I also cut two pieces of 1/2" all thread and put them in the bottom two poistions as additional back up to keep the transom plate and engine from dropping. Funny thing is once the assembly came out the engine and inner transom plate (still connected together) did not move. After looking at it further I'm assuming the transom angle is creating a wedge thus preventing the inner plate from sliding down the transom. Anyway, like is said, perhaps i'm just lucky but I spent a lot of time thinking about something that pretty much turned out to be anti climatic. So for anyone else wondering about changing a rotten transom assembly without pulling the engine it's very doable and not very hard. Hope this helps.

ezrizer

A quick note. As I installed the new assembly I had a slight interference issue between the the tiller arm and inner plate. The tiller was about 1/8" lower than what would clear. I used a 1" wide medium coarse file and relieved the back edge (facing transom) of the transom plate slightly and was then able to wiggle the new assembly in. The last inch was a struggle until i got enough stud through the plate and then used the nuts to pull it through. No big deal, just alternated tightening the nuts to pull up evenly and all worked out well.