Griff

Correct on the alignment tool. It should slide in and out easily. Coat it with grease and adjust accordingly.

Engine weighs about 800lbs.

Pesky Varmint

I did this job on a pair of 575SCi's and pretty much
everything been mentioned so far is true. Pull the
motors completely if possible.

Now here's where my situation got complicated: offshore
style mounts (you probably have standard mounts) that
for all practical purposes have no alignment. With almost
400 hours I felt it prudent to replace the rear mounts in
the flywheel cover. That will require a power pull and all
the associated tools. Not to mention a new style mount
that requires an iterative fit to determine if you need to use
the optional washer supplied (and I've pretty well decided
that anyone with offshore mounts will find it necessary to
use the washer, standard mounts could go either way).

Luckily with the washers my alignment was spot on (after I
realized that you must do final tightening of the front mounts
with the engine supported-again only true for offshore mounts). If offshore mounts are off at that point, it becomes
quite complicated.

Overall though a job worth tackling.

Pesky Varmint

dcroghan

Did these boats come with Offshore mounts from the factory or is that an upgrade from stock? I would assume that we have the stock mounts.

Pesky Varmint

Offshore mounts aren't usually used until you get to either
Merc blue engines or aftermarket engines. If you're front
motor mounts are the adjustable pedestals, they are
not offshore mounts.

Pesky

VegasHallett

Make sure you get the proper alignment tool. Mercruiser sells differnet ones depending on your outdrive.

dcroghan

We pulled both of the drives off today, it is the only thing we have done so far. We wanted to check the alignment of each engine as they are just out of curiousity.

What we found:

The starboard engine, the one with the broken coupler, would take the alignment tool in farther than the port engine by about an inch.

It seemed like the broken engine was going all the way in (with the tool) while the engine that is OK seemed like maybe it was not aligned and was not going all the way in? Does that make sense?

Do you think the port engine could be out of alignment? Both were fairly easy to move the tool through but the starboard engine seemed to be a bit tougher to pull out.

Any suggestions, thoughts, as to what might be happening?

We are getting ready to tear into it shortly so the quicker I can get a response I guess the better I will feel.

Thanks guys!

baronbob

the bad coupler is not a good test for alignment. the tool needs to go in all the way and meet against the seat.