GD Seal!!!!
 

Ok, here the story..........
1. Get my Top Gun used it has a leaking pinion shaft seal. Dumps oil out of the resevoir into the bellows, into the bilge. Repaired by seller, no big deal.

2. 2 weeks later both seals need to be replaced. I contract local drive guru to replace the seals correctly. Upon removal of the leaking seals he indicates that the tech must have been a knucklehead b/c he set the seals with a punch leaving marks on the seals. He replaces them and charges me $750 for both. Ouch, but I figure at least it is done correctly.

3. 1 week later port seal fails again, and I return the boat to Guru. He explains that it is a design defect in the XR's and that the seal material is very weak and fails under heat, or the seal creeps out of the carrier and grenades. He tells me that there is an update from merc but he does not have it yet. Sells me drive showers also. He replaces seal (singular) and I pick up boat. This time 1 seal replaced costs me $770!!! I kinda thought it would be appropriate to comp this one since the boat had 1 hour of use between failures.......yeah right.

4. Go out to boat today and starboard resevoir is empty......this is the seal he did not replace the second time. I suspect that he had his shop worker do the initial seal job and then when it failed he did it himself. That would explain why his work has held and the 1 week older seal failed.

Do I have a right to be disappointed?? Is this par for the XR course, failed seals every few months??? Who is the drive guy to go to in central florida. I want to replace the seals and do a set of new gears for the season and am not a millionaire. Help!!

the guys at max machine works have a fix for the problem already i guess the way it is explained to me is the straight cut gears produce too much presure and blow the seal
there number is 520-505-5248
good luck

I know people who have cured this problem by using a oversized drive oil bottle. Gives room for oil to rise instead of blowing seals cheap fix and has worked on 4 XR drives for a year now. I believe teague sells the bottles.

d-hlaw,
Merc DOES sell an updated replacement seal. The seal only cost about $60 each. This is probably what your mechanic used. Call Chris (AKA "SterndriveSpec") 630-774-3222. He's very helpful---tell him you're from OSO. He just might know of someone in your area who can help you who is good with drives and fair on parts/pricing. Chris has helped MANY OSO members---even just by talking to him. He should be able to tell you what to expect to pay for repairs/parts. I have a pair of XR drives and had the updated seals replaced in mine as well. Drive showers are a very good idea too so your mechanic steered you in the right direction there----they help keep that drive oil cool and you need that with the Bravo XR drives---especially with a heavier boat like you have.
I hope this has helped a little.

Mark/KAAMA

Okay, I have 2 rebuilt XR's sitting on a shelf.

To replace the seal with the updated model, do I just knock out the Ujoints, remove the pinion nut and yoke, drag the seal out, press in a new seal, retorque the pinion and pop the ujoints back in?

Or is there more to it?

Ok, here is the results of pulling the drives off. Starboard seal was again pushed out of the carrier slightly resulting in contact with the yoke and causing heat. Obviously the seal doesnt last very long under these circumstances. The prior seal was loctited in also.......

This is the port seal which was still in good shape

The updated seal carrier has a slight lip that will not allow the seal to creep out and make contact with the yoke. I would show a pic but I put it in the drive before I snapped a pic... I also found another interesting item while in there..

Looks like something bad was fixing to happen

oh man....thats a good early catch!!! :)

Bad casting?...Good catch.

scary, eh???

:eek:

I don't know about the bad casting. It looks to me like it wasn't set up right. Look at the uneven wear on the tooth surface. The one end looks like it was loaded to much and doing all the work.

The new retainer/seal is part number 11-841026A2 , we sell them for $53.64. I was really embarrassed by this the first time it happened to a drive we sold. There has been no service bulletin or notice from the factory either.