miamioffshore

My boat ran fine all day, until I put it on the lift at a friends house and went to fire the starboard engine, no starter response whatsoever, open hatch, water in starboard drive oil resorvoir, not alot but it's definetly in their, half inch of bubbles at the top, sludge at the bottom, not metal, just gray sludge. Obviously there is a problem with the drive, but would this stop the starboard engine from even trying to crank? The batteries are fine, sticks were in neutral, port engine fired and flushed fine. What gives???? Up until today the boat had only been run once in the last 5 months, I'm thinking my the drive seals went bad/dried out during that time and now they giving out??

Tonto

Could be that there is some tension on the shift cable, and it is not quite completely in neutral. If that's not it, I would start looking for a bad ground either in the batery cable or wiring harness.

Robert

Vinny P

It is unlikely that the no start condition is related to the drive oil. You have 2 problems here. First thing to do is get a test light on the small start wire on the starter, ground the clip, have someone else turn the key to start, check for a light at the test light. If it lights, the starter is bad. Try to smack ithe starter with a hammer while someone is cycling the key from ignition to start. If the test light doesnt light up, you have a wiring problem. First place I would check is that little start relay on the engine.

carrboy

Hold the key on and move the shifter back and forth from the neutral position a little bit...doesn't work,try the other.Oh,fix the drive seal after you figure the other out.

OSO

better pull the boat and get that looked at (the drive), let me know if you need help. we can drop the lower unit oil at the OSO shop and go from there.

carrboy

Yeah,if the motor isn't turning over because of the drive being locked up you got big problems!!!One thing I forgot...before you pull the boat,see if the prop will spin by hand while the shifters in neutral...bet that waters cold!

miamioffshore

The prop will spin thank God! I held the start button down and jiggled the gear shifter, engine finally started, so we have that problem figured out. I'm going to pull the boat this afternoon to have the drive looked at. OSO Steve, I'll let you know if I need to bring it up there, I have a friend who use to race for Fountain on the way here now to have a look it at. Possibly the seals dried up from sitting without use for 6 months??

miamioffshore

Now my builder says, there is no water in the drive oil??? When I opened the hatch the other day there was about a 1 inch layer of white/bubbly/milky looking stuff at the top of the reservoir and a grey sludge at the bottom?? We double checked with eachother that he had the correct drive , he drained it and says no sign of water at all? What do I do?

jryan26

Run it!

boatme

You are going to think i am nuts here but i fought having problem with water in my drives (So I thought ) almost an entire summer one year

I rebuilt my drives (was time at the time) and this problem presisted in one drive

i replaced the drive case -- still had the same problem--
I had drive off every weekend and tore down completley and put back to gether for 10 weeks in a row everytime i got it together it still produced water in my resevoir

then one day after the full tear down (again) and the subsequent test drive i found more moiture in the bottle i had this hair up my butt to switch the resevoir caps just for kicks and giggles and guess what ??? Moiture in the other bottle!!!!! Sounds strange but i would put on new resevior caps and see if it dosent fix the problem I chased this for an entire summer and the fix was a $6 cap