Drive gear oil hose replacement
 

Got a buddy that has a B3 where the gear oil hose from the bell housing to the transom assembly has a hole. Splicing won't work. Gotta replace or eliminate it completely. The TA end can be accessed no problem, but can we get to the bell housing end w/o having to dissasemble bell housing from ring? Going to try to replace this hose on trailer in marina parking lot this weekend in order to make it thru this summer. Or can just the plunger at the bell housing/drive be removed and the drive bottle feature be ignored? Not sure if a hot drive will try to pull in water thru the check ball.
Would prefer to not get any deeper than pulling the just the drive if possible.

Thanks

Just changed mine on a B3. I was into a bellows job anyway, so the bell housing was off, and had my gimbal ring off also to weld it up.

With the drive off, and the bell housing pushed all the way up, you could probably do it, but getting the clamp on will be difficult when you don't have great access to the forward side of the bell housing. I used stainless hose clamps in place of the plastic Merc clamps. Just make sure that the wormscrew of the clamp is not chafing the bellows at all trim positions, or you'll be into more work later.

Definitely removing the bellhousing would help, and you probably wouldn't have to disconnect the shift cable, but would probably have to remove the water line insert/water line and U-joint bellow to gain enough access.

But you definitely want to do something (even blocking it off) so that you're not sucking in water. My boat was a 1996, and the hose hadn't failed yet, but it was starting to crack/rot.