dawiz74

Well, I got out on the lake late Saturday and decided to meet some friends at the party cove. I made it about 3/4 of the way and then I heard a knock in the drive and the boat lost power. To make a loooong story short, I got the boat on a guys lift and found 2 golf ball sized holes in the lower unit (one on each side). Don't know the extent of the damage, but it doesn't look good. If anyone knows of someone with a Bravo III lower unit for sale I'm in the market!

ThirdBird

Ouch!!!!!!!!

jaybird

Do you have insurance? They will most likely cover it if you have it. I didn't even think to use mine before when I smacked my lower unit before. Covered the whole thing.

dawiz74

I do have insurance and hope that it will cover it. I'm going down today to find out the extent of the damage.

jaybird

Your insurance will most likely quote you the price for a rebuilt lower from a company they deal with. They will also pay for time to have it installed. Props may need replacement. All this $$ also minus your deductible. You can either go that route, or just take the check and shop around yourself for the parts, and either swap it on yourself if you can, or find a shop to put it on. I found a rebuilt lower for short money, and paid a mechanic cash to put it on. Had the prop rebuilt. Ended up that the $$ saved equaled the deductible, so I didn't have to shell out any extra bucks. Bravo 3 is harder to find than Bravo 1 so you may have to search a bit. Good luck.

dawiz74

Well, the insurance adjuster called today and just mailed me a check for $7200! They went down and looked at my boat last Thur. and asked the shop what all was wrong. They said the lower was toast and the rest of the drive appeared to look good. The adj. asked if it was the mechanics boat, would he replace the whole drive? He of coarse said YES and the adj. said send me a quote for a new drive. HOW BOUT THAT! My mechanic said he wished every insurance deal went this smooth. Its going to cost me my $500 deductable, but I think a NEW drive is worth 500 bucks!

offthefront

iTrader: (1)

dawiz .... was the damage caused by striking something in the water or did the drive let go ?

jaybird

Who do you have for insurance! I have never heard of someone getting the whole drive done. Also, most companies I have dealt with only give you rebuilt drive unless your boat was only a year or two old.

I'd say just order a rebuilt lower somewhere, and use the extra $$ for something else. I doubt you'd get your money back putting a new drive on now when selling the boat sometime down the road. Food for thought.

Formula Outlaw

Congratulatons..........we don't hear many stories turn out this good.....

dawiz74

offthefront....I just had the drive serviced the 1st of April and they said it looked good and there were several spots on my props that indicated that I hit something pretty hard.

Jaybird....My insurance is through Shelter whom I have my home and auto insurance through. I thought about going with an insurance company that specialized in boats, but it was twice as much. I think I pay about $400.00 a year! As far as the "new" drive goes, my mechanic buys drives from Mercury that have cosmetic blemishes on them that they sell as "refurbished". They (my mechanic) said they would probably scratch the drive putting it on worse than the blemishes that come from the factory.

I never have this good of luck. I was planning on paying for this one out-of-pocket! Now I just have to see if they raise my premium!