Kurt Hamilton

Has anyone ever broken the rear engine mounts that are incorporated into the bell housing on their stern drive setups?

Are the bell housings beefed up in the larger HP mercruiser range or are they similar all the way through?

Pretty sure this is what happened to a mate the other week, it made a mess of the transom assembly and rubber drive coupler. The bell housing is in a million bits cause the shaft flogged around inside it but im pretty confident it was the bell housing that failed first and from there it was like a grenade went off.

mike tkach

iTrader: (3)

my bet is that the coupler broke first,and the boll housing just happend to be in the way of the flying parts.

Kurt Hamilton

The bell housing just looks like very thin pourous cast aluminium?
How often do the drive couplers fail?
Its one of those things i guess, you could blame it on either but once everything is in a million pieces how can you tell what went first.

Griff

Couplers fail about a 1000x more often than a bell housing, especially if they are out of alignment or not greased. I've never even heard of bell housing being a cause of a failure. I would also say a coupler failure caused the broken bell housing.

I will tell you I had a u-joint let go at 6000rpm in drag car and it broke the tranny bell housing and yoke on the rear end in the car.