Consensus seems to be u-joint which from my understanding, is relatively straight forward. It's only been in the water 4 times since engine and drive were serviced so you can imagine why I'm surprised.
I think Bup's order of work sounds pretty solid, I'll take that in to the dealer when I get a chance next week. Getting them to do the work may take a little longer..........

All greatly appreciated, thank you.

RR

Invite some more OSO guys back they'll have that drive off and problem solved in 20 min👍

There's an open invite to any of you but if you bring your wives/girlfriends, they can be a bit of 'anchor' on the nightlife here. Seriously, happy to meet anyone coming my way, the last visitors had a good time.

RR

P.S. I hope you weren't asking me to pay for your flight..........Lol.

Any news on the problem?

Dealer is flat out at the moment so we've booked for Monday 4th at 9.am. I will be there watching over their shoulder and will report back. I'm feeling pretty confident the forum is right and hopefully won't cost me an arm and a leg........

It's a bit hard here sometimes, only one dealer (2 branches) and neither one are at the marina where the boat is. They've always been good to me, no charge for on site work but if they're overloaded, there's not much I can do. I'm tempted to buy a few tools and pull the leg off myself but regardless of what I find, I'll still end up waiting for the dealer to fix it anyway.

I will definitely update here when I know more.

RR

rak,
my advice would be to buy the service manuals for the engine and drive
even if you have no intention of performing any level of maintenance.
here's why,
the dealer / repair facility may reputable or may be the only one around for miles.
buy reading and familiarizing yourself with part names and what those parts look like
the flow charts and recognizing everything has a torque value and specific procedure

by understanding the basics of how the thing works your jaw should hit the ground when you hear the old
wobble shaft is out of magnetic deviation causing the flux capacitor to damage the pcu which led to a misfire
that wore out the u joints,gimbal bearing, and the injectors need re calibrating because of the magnetic deviation i mentioned earlier.

Remember, on a Bravo application, the "drive/input shaft" is spinning as soon as the engine is started. Your "clutch" is the top of the Bravo outdrive.
As such, if you hear the noise in neutral, it's usually within the U-joints OR the gimbal bearing. I bring this up, because if you have bad U-joints, but you still need to fire up the drive to flush the motor, you could exacerbate your problem, especially if the U-joint lets go. The gimbal bearing can make mild to moderate noise if it's going out too; and that's a wear item that does need replaced from time to time.

Also, since your drive/input shaft is rotating as soon as the engine is running, you can't have the drive trimmed up high. This is hell on the U-joints; and will prematurely wear them. Make certain that when you are flushing on the rack or the trailer, that the drive is trimmed down to neutral. Also, you can't trim your drive way up and put it in gear to idle through shallow areas; for the same reason. Not everyone realizes all of this, and they prematurely wear and/or destroy their U-joints. When a U-joint comes apart at speed, it can literally break the drive off the back of the boat; seen it happen.

All probably good advice but........

I'm too lazy to do homework
I'm too old to learn new tricks
It's too hot here to do hard work
And the big one............I can get all the answers I need right here on OSO.

RR

P.S. I think the dealer here is very fair with me. On my last boat with Verados, they replaced all three shipper shafts, two of the Johnson rods and a helium flux capacitor for under 2k and they cleaned up so well afterwards, I couldn't even tell they'd been near the boat.

When repairing boats one has to become a detective. Alot of times a failed part or more was caused by something else not the part itself that failed. Yes parts do fail as well, but alot of times something else cause the failure. NOT SAYING the OP -- U joints are good here but a failed ujoint all by itself on a 10 / 12 year old - low hour boat is not common, unless self inflicked or water intrusion or something made it fail.

Also just adding my opinion here --- owning the manuals without the many special tools and quality general tools sometimes is not worth buying for a boat owner versus an experience trained real marine shop do the work. Good quality marine shops can easily have 250 K to 500 K in tools, special tools, manuals and training at their finger tips. I can easily see where rak rua is coming from letting a shop do the detective work. Good luck.

Will add some people can have a huge struggle man handling a Bravo especially a bravo III when reinstalling it. One of my customers is dealing with this as he thought pulling his bravo III and reinstalling was going to be a walk in the park man handling it ---- he ended up hurting his back really bad .

totally forgot the johnson rods