nailit

If you have cable steering and the housing was worn, you may need a new one. Mine wasnt actually too bad, so when I put back together, the steering was tight! You can have the housing fixed as well. They weld it back and reshape the square hole.

Johnb35711

Hey I'm a new member and thought I could contribute to this thread. I have a 1992 Scarab 21 Excel that had a water leak. Like some other people in here I replaced a bunch of things before accepting the fact it was my swivel shaft seal. If you put your hand in the tiller arm area and it's wet... that's your problem. I've come to understand this is an issue with ever single bravo drive on our type of boats. Not only is the OEM shaft carbon steel which corrodes and destroys the seal, but our type of boats sit low in the water which both causes the corrosion and the subsequent leak. Here are a few tips I came up with after making the repair...

-use better drill bits than are supplied with the J&R kit. you don't want to break one.
-there is a cotter pin on the lower swivel pin that keeps it in place. This was a nightmare for me. If it's tough, get out the saw and just cut the swivel pin, then you can drill out the cotter pin and save a lot of time.
-if your upper swivel pin is rust-welded into the gimbal ring like mine, it will seem impossible to remove. Get a threaded rod and thread into the bottom of the swivel shaft. Then use a couple metal plates with a hole to put over the threaded rod, and use a nut/washer to slowly tighten and extract the swivel shaft.

These tips would have been incredibly helpful for me beforehand, although Ron's youtube videos were still incredibly helpful. The cotter pin was the worst. Many beers were drank, and spent a good amount of time with blow torches and hammers before just cutting the lower pin out, and using the threaded rod technique on the upper swivel shaft.

If anyone has any questions just let me know!

-John