WOW! Why people don't do things the way they SHOULD be done is beyond me. I did a full winterize on 3 boats last weekend from changing motor oil, filters, drive fluid, and antifreeze, and not the antifreeze "kit" but pulled freeze plugs and hoses and filled motor by hand all in about 6 hours. It takes all of 5-10 mins of someones busy schedule to fill the damn outdrive from the bottom, THE RIGHT WAY!!! WOW!

Feel free to fill any which way you like, but just remember when you blow your drive, well...

Stupid people annoy me... Sorry for the rant to those that DO do things the way they should be done to prevent possible problems.

Oh, and by the way, I have a reservoir also like most do.

WOW, there are opinions on both sides of the fill issue. My original decision to try to fill the drive through the top cap was based on two assumptions: First, Mercruiser Engineers would not design the drive so that there were air pockets in the drive (an inverted cone with no way to vent air upward). If the drive had air traps in it, then the fill port would have to be ducted directly to the air pocket and the fill flow would have to be fast enough to displace the air. Depending on the shape of the air pocket, there would be no guarantee that all air would be displaced. Second, since both air and lube are fluids and the lube has a much higher density, within a short time gravity would win the battle and the lube would displace all air beneath it (the laws of physics are a great thing). So, my original question was, How full is full? With the drive cap off where should the fluid level be? I suspect that completely filling the drive would be OK if the overflow bottle is large enough to accept the displaced fluid from thermal expansion. But I do not know this... Again, my intentions were to fill the drive without dealing with the leaky POS Pump and my assumptions are based on Mercruiser Engineers not being idiots... Am I wrong?

Thanks.

WOW you are ambitious, I have never heard of anyone pulling freeze plugs to winterize a boat. I usually use the petcock in the bottom of the block.

There should be a fill line on the bottle, fill it to there and after the first couple times out check it and top off if needed. Bravo drive should take 2 1/2 quarts and Alpha should take 1 1/2.

X2

To answer your question, I'd think the level would be at the same level as were the remote res. fitting check ball valve is. It's located a bit below the cap surface, so it would appear that the drive has a small air pocket under the cap, but then I've never removed the cap while a drive still had lube. I may be wrong here, just thinking where the fitting is in reference to the very top.