[QUOTE=oceanoutlaw;4646937]I didn’t fully understand what you were saying here until someone explained that the first groove was for an alpha drive. Pulled it through to the second groove and the ring slid in with just a few taps. Pure genius.

On a side note, is there any reason not to use bellows adhesive? The one I pulled off showed zero evidence of any adhesive and slid right off with no prying.

Well if you put the bellows on with no adhesive and no clamp. Run the drive up and the bellow easily comes off.

A good clean surface both sides with correct adhesive will help keep it on if the clamp losened up over the season without it being checked.

So since the engineers specked bellows adhesive I always use it.

one trick is to take the helmet off and glueing and clamping that end on the bench. Then with clean mating surface clamp in place push the bellows on tighten clamp let glue set.

Two mechanices working side by side one takes helmet off ones doesn’t to replace bellows. Wrench pulling helmet off usually wins time snd quality wise every time.

Agreed taking off the helmet is best way to clean everything and to make sure you get both sides in the groove with bellows adhesive. :-)

Funny thing is after it was all said and done I found the service manual for it that I bought first after buying the boat because you can’t do chit without the information, lol.

A few things I had going against me;

1) The boat is remote, so I’d go after a long week of work and often was always missing that one tool back in the garage.
2) Fatigue. I’d been working on this pos all summer and felt like one step up and two steps back.
3) The biggest issue - too much Internet. I became reliant on the interwebs when it’s often idiots having the exact same trouble as me teaching me what I already was doing wrong.

A few pointers for the next poor sap that finds this thread.

1) That little metal clip goes on the bottom of the bellows on the transom side. When the hose clamp is cinched it’s pushed into a groove so it doesn’t pop off when the drive is lifted.

2) The bellows has multiple applications and it is the second groove for the Bravos and first groove for the Alphas. The ring then slides in easily enough and when the drive is cinched in it holds everything in place.

3) only use oem bellows and senders or you will be doing this again in short order. The Merc sending units actually have good instructions for what I just described.

4) Your mating surfaces can not be too clean. The bellows I pulled off had no glue on it so that was easy, but I had to clean everything up after redoing the helmet connection.

Good luck!