What Color is your Drive Oil
 

I just drained my drive oil on my Bravo drives. The oil in the starboard drive looks almost as good as when it went in, nice green color. The other port drive oil looks a little dirty or dark. Both the lower and upper magnetic drain plugs looked normal, a tiny bit of fuzz on the lower no metallic particles. No water in either drive.

The oil on both drives has 50 hours, not run hard, the total time for both drives 580 hours. I have always used Mercruiser Drive oil.

Just curious what other boaters have experienced with twin drives, do they both always look the same?

Should look the same. I would venture the drive with the darker oil is running hotter for some reason. You may be seeing the early signs of a bearing failure. Are you running drive showers? Could be as simple as the port drive not getting the water flow from the shower the starboard drive is receiving.

Mine were the same way this year. Port/LH rotation drive lube was much darker. Bravo's spinning LH rotation do tend to run a little hotter since they put more pressure on the top cap. I suspect the bearings may be getting worn on my port drive.

Thanks for the input, my props turn in so the port drive is RH and the starboard is LH. The port RH has the darker oil and the starboard LH has the nice clean green oil.