MBam, how would merc know if shafts were twisted, drive nhad too much hp in front of it etc IF there rep wasn't doing the work? I have never evemn tried to get any merc parts warrentied, Smitty

Smitty,

I think in the end those gears will fall under one of the "few exceptions" he's talking about.

But for all our sake, I'd love to be wrong. Should be interesting when they send it up the pole.

So far, never heard of a dealer being willing or able to warranty drive gears that were not installed onsite by their people.

For me, the grey area is the fact that he has a merc tech do the work. If the tech is in good with company he may be able to pull one over but according to Merc any gears bought over counter and installed by consumer has no warranty (for obvious reasons).

Best of luck. Hope to hear how it goes.

Still Waiting for photos from my mechanic. He says where gear sheared off that the metal is half light grey and half black. In his opinion a defective casting to start with. He has sent the photos to merc and the "warranty guy" is out of the office until tomorrow.

Unfortunately, when the gear broke off it embedded itself into the case so now my entire upper is junk.

Hopefully they will back up their parts.

Do they resemble these ?

You might be surprised what a company will cover if you have all of your information together. A broken gear will tell you why it happened if you know what to look for (and it hasn't been ground up too severely after failure). Presenting the facts is key.

We have returned failed gears on numerous occasions to a VERY large heavy equipment manufacturer for warranty consideration. Always included is a power point presentation to show our findings and why we believe the gear(s) failed. As yet, none of the claims have been disputed, and the parts have all been replaced at no cost.

The color change in the surface is likely an indication of different fracture stages. Does it mean there was a defect in the part? No. Are pictures from a handheld camera likely to reveal the root cause? No. The initiation point of a fracture can rarely by analyzed without magnification. If your claim is denied based on a few pictures, make sure to get an explanation.

I don't know if any of this will help or not. My point is, it can be determined factually whether on not the gear was defective as manufactured. That said, I've never dealt with Mercury on any type of claim.

I broke an XR gear set after 11 hours so I tried an XZ helical set and they lasted 2.5 hours. The pinion completely stripped. Would have got nowhere with a warranty but I checked the hardness of the gears and the pinion gear was very soft. Bad quality part from Mercury. Sent the paperwork with the hardness readings to Mercury through the rebuild shop and they gave up a new set as warranty.
This did not help with all the other parts I had to replace.
Documentation is the only way to get anything out of them.
With 600SC motors get use to breaking XR’s.
SCX or Bmax is the way to go.

Out of curiosity, what was the hardness of the gear (case and core if you have the numbers)?

Hey Mark, any news? I saw Sunday when I returned that your boat was still not there.

Case hardness on the bad pinion gear was 45.4 HRc and the core was 34.5 HRc. Case should be 60 and core 42.