I completely agree with having a clean gasket surface-but one word of caution-DO NOT use a surface conditioning disc(whizzer wheel) to clean the flange. The abrasive will contaminate the gimble bearing and make it fail very quickly, the grease will hold it and make it fail much quicker. Use a gasket scraper and/or a razor blade only.

Thanks all for the advise, I have a razor paint scraper I will use. The bearings are shot I will be getting new ones. I need to get an alignment tool to check that all is well. It looks like I will be getting The IMCO Extreme SC Drives :) :)

Thanks Again

Little trick with the razor blade. Hold it at 90 degrees to the surface and real quick go up and down with it and it will flatten the paint out real quick. You do not have to put much preasure on it at all.

Jon

Since we are all great at looking at things and finding what ever...... Look at this pic and see what's wrong http://www.tekzoned.com/whatswrong/index.html

Be sure to lube the splines on the shaft and double check the ujoints and grease every thing untill clean grease comes out clean it up and put HP gear lube in the drive.

Merc recommends applying 2-4-C lube to the o'rings. BTW, those thin section o'rings, especially the larger one, like to come out of the groove machined for them. It looks like the factory uses some type of adhesive to retain them. This may be what happened to the shift linkage o'ring.

Bell housing "Tweeked"?
 

I noticed today that if you look at the bottom of both the bell housing it is a little closer to the gimble ring on the right side than on the left. Is this normal? Also one bell housing moves lateralally about 1/8" or so. I am thinking the bushings or the washers where the trim senders go may be worn. Does this sound like the case? Any help would be appreciated.