Hi everyone, I recently got another boat and the oil Reservoir mounting bracket was broken so they wire tied it to a hose. My question is, the hose comes out of the Reservoir and then goes about 8 inches high then drops back down and heads to the gimbal housing. Is this system gravity feed? If so then i need to shorten the hose. I think it probably wouldnt be a bad idea to do that anyways right? Thanks

as far as I know it is gravity fed, the hose shouldn't go above the reservoir.

Ok thanks, thats what I thought but just wanted to double check.

What drives?

1994 Mercruiser Alpha one gen 2

I took the loop out of the hose so now it should flow freely by gravity. What I did notice was that when I had the bottle full with gear oil and had the hose completely off of the fitting hardly any gear oil came out. I then took the bottle off of the boat and was able to completely turn it downward and only a very very small stream would come out(sometimes it was so small it almost stopped). I then figured I would dissemble all of the internal part to clean then but even after I did that it was the same thing. So im wondering if the lower unit does suck the fluid out of there by vacuum or do I have a defective bottle? Thanks!