Hey drive experts,
About 2 years ago, I replaced the upper gears in my 0F Bravo with an XZ upgrade kit. The original gears were not damaged; the pressed-on brass clutch leverage ring on the reverse gear kept falling off. I did the work myself after buying the necessary Mercury tools. Today I opened the drive to check the gears and pinion bearing preload. Preload was loose (2ft lbs) so I tightened it up to ~9 ft lbs. The forward gear has a perfect wear pattern, just a little shiny band right in the middle of each tooth. The pinion worried me though, it looks like there is some pitting on it. Maybe it's just something from the machining process but I took some pics to see what you ask think. Should I be worried?

Oil was Swepco 80-90. Just changed to Royal Purple 75-90 because it was in stock at Napa.

Of the 2 teeth that you can see the complete side of the contact area of the gear, the one on the left looks fine, the one on the right appears stained at the inner portion of the gear, but that could be residual lube

Although this is an XR gear, this is a classic
example of pitting

Ya it looks like oil on the gear tooth,,if that is oil,, do you have all gears shimmed per Merc. specs.,,if so I believe it's ok to use.

I should have pointed out the area of concern a little better.

I don't remember seeing these marks on the coast side of the gear teeth when I installed it. They almost look raised, but I couldn't feel them with my hands. I am reasonably sure they are left over from the machining process. Just curious if anyone had seen that before.
The drive is correctly shimmed and I checked backlash with the little Mercury flag tool.

Did you measure pinion depth?

I'm not sure what you mean by pinion depth. Is there a shimmed adjustment for the u-joint/bearing/pinion assembly? I figured the backlash check would've covered me. If the pinion was too far back, backlash would be excessive, too far forward, it would be too little.

First the pinion gear depth must be set to spec.with the pinion shimming tool,,, then shim the driven gears to correct backlash

An OF drive wouldn’t have had the shimmable pinion bearing setup, that came around the OM range, the main difference is the rear pinion bearing race has a shoulder on it instead of the separate ring that goes between the races, you can put the new style input bearing in the older cases and shim it as needed, the spec is .025 using the shim tool