i recently bought a 1987 formula 357, it came with one drive but the drive was not on the boat, the boat sat on the trailer without any drives attached for the past 3-4 yrs, the drives are not lining up anymore, anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how to make this work, i can only figure maybe the boat was a little wet and dried up, tweaking the allignment, maybe it sat on the trailer wrong for 3 yrs, or????

Splines lined up

You need to get or borrow an alignment tool and a buddy, preferably someone that has done this before.

Grease the end of the alignment tool and make small adjustments on one side of the motor at a time, no more than 2 turns on the motor mount nuts each time, the other person is checking fit each time you make an adjustment.

The marks on the grease on the tool from the splines will give you an idea which way the motor needs to go.

don't leave the tool in whilst adjusting. If going up and down on one side shows no improvement, return to original setting and try other side.

The tool should slide all the way to the shoulder with no more than a firm push.


anyone else?

Boomer, I would check the gimbel bell housing for up and down motion. If so, use a screwdriver to bring the bell housing up as you goto put the drive on . This will bring the alinement back to were the drive should slide in. I have seen this up/down motion numberous times. especialy on the trs. Tom

Last resort

This is true have mounted many trs drives over the years, sometimes they will go right on in 2 mins other times it takes a lot of trys and or adjusting

When I had TRS I would put a long screw driver behind the lower part of the bell housing to keep it straight. Then slide the drive on the bell housing studs and as you're pushing it forward stick a long skinny screw driver in between and adjust the U-Joints so they're straight. By doing this it "flips" the driveshaft into the tailstock. Sometimes you need to spin the prop as your doing this.

Its a PITA but when you do it enough times and you get the hang of it. Believe me, I had a buddy try to put his drives on for 4 hours straight. He called me up and I went over and had them both on the boat within 10 minutes. He was pissed! But he knew how to do it for the next time.

I've never done this myself but I've heard rumors of people shoving foam in between the u-joints to keep them straight. The rumor has it that when you fire up the motor it shreds the foam and you're good to go.

Again, I never tried this myself....

I've seen people wrap duct tape around the u joint to keep them straight.

Nothing about putting a trs on is EASY. Its all dumb luck and persistance. Try everything that has been said and when it doesn't work. Try it all over again. GOOD LUCK I,ve found that hanging it from my forklift helps.