Mercury SSM V Drives what oil?
 

I am looking for the best suggestion on Gear lube for my drives. I was looking at using Amsoil Marine Gear lube, but there are always conflicting stories. These drives do see some extreme duty, I have 583CID SC's in front of them they are 900hp so I would like to use a good gear lube that has good pressure and load capability.

I am also looking for the oil Capacity for the SSM V drive.

Capacity for a #5
 

The capacity of a stock #5, i.e. w/o any spacers, is approx. 2.5 gal.
Let me know if you are looking for, in my opinion, the best drive fluid available. I have 10 NEW gal. available from when I had my Cigarette running #5's. Sold the boat and have the fluid on the shelf. It is not cheap, but I never had a drive failure using it and whenever they were torn down and inspected the gears and bearings always looked as if they were new.

Gary
612-247-7081
[email protected]

There is a thread in the drive section about drive lube. The Amsoil Marine gear is NOT recommended for our kind of HP use? I had a long talk with Teague Marine about drive oil, I run the severe gear version.

Mercury recommends Torco gear lube

I run the Severe Duty Stuff in my Rock Buggy (another toy) but I didn't really know if I could use it in the Outdrives just concerned if there ever was any water intrusion the Severe Duty might not fair as well.

This is my first year running it so I don't have a lot of history to share. I plan on pulling the drain plugs and the rear cap for a look inside. When I do I'll let you know.

Don't pull the rear cap, while the drive is on the boat, w/o supporting the input, aka "donkey dic-".
You increase the chance that the input will "fall" damaging the input seal. You can pull the rear cap, when the drive is off the boat, but I would position it with the propshaft pointing toward the ceiling and the input pointing toward the floor. In that position the input can't "fall" damaging the seal. You can carefully rotate the input while looking at the upper gear set to see any damage and do a tooth count to check the ratio of the drive. Any questions, give me a call and I can walk you through it.

Gary
612-247-7081

Thanks I'll keep that in mind.

TORCO vs AMSOIL
 

What know one will tell you is that once saltwater enters the drive , the saltwater and torco oil mixes well together running thru out the drive. Amsoil will not mix with water.Any synthetic oil is better than torco. AMSOIL exceeds torco oil plus amsoil synthetic will run cooler than torc oil.

Gearlube
 

Mercury recommends so they can make money off the oil. But Mercury will not tell you not to use synthetic oil.