I'am rebuilding my TRS drives ,i need to replace the upper and lower gear set in one of the drives ,replacing all bearings and seals .Been reading that parts are getting hard to find ,what parts are getting hard to find ?Went on the mercruiserparts.com site and their showing that the gears are available but shim kit NLA. Is this going to be order a thousand plus dollars of parts and hope to get them by winter.If the shim kits are not available what is every one using?Do they need to be made up?

I heard that shim assembly # 15-66672A1, located under the vertical shaft bearing # 31-66670A1, is NLA.

The tapered roller bearing cup of a.m. bearing is called "L 68111" and is manufactured by TIMKEN.

Cup O.D. is 60 mm, obviously a metric size.

Shim O.D. is 59,8 mm, shim I.D. is 54 mm, I found thicknesses in following gradations 0.1; 0.2 & 0.5 mm.

You have to heat up the bearing cup seat in the right way in order to avoid damaging the rare shims while pulling out the cup.

Anyway it might be a problem to find in the US a low-priced supplier for metric sized shims.

Joee