jt and mcollinstn

Thanks for the help
When I get the new gear set I should be running fairly quickly. It really wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.

Here's a tip if it ever breaks away from port:
 

I did that once 1/2 way between Marathon and K West. Thank goodness my buddy thought of this:

Since you had reverse and blew out forward, take the props off (I had to do this in 4'ers - which was not fun!), and switch them. This will enable you to put your shifters in reverse and now go forward.

Better said... If your props "were" spinning out -- switching them causes them to spin "in" - so now what was reverse is now forward. Hope this helps! It got me to land on both motors before dark. It's never fun limping back on one motor!

Joe
Good idea in your situation, I was only about 2 miles from the boat landing so idling back on one motors no big deal.

I probably wouldn't recommend running the drive if you don't have to because I had a lot of metal pieces floating around in there and could probably cause even more damage.

One more question
When I drained the gear lube it was very black and smelled terrible. I can be honest that I don't baby my boat so I am assuming running it hard broke the drive and when the drive went it did this to the gear lube or is it the other way, I neglected the gear lube too long and that caused the drive to go?

Blowing the floor out of a gear is "usually" from overstress, but increased drive friction from overheated and contaminated lube can raise the stress level on the parts, too.

I've broken Bravos by breaking the floors out AND by breaking the top cap, both on different occasions. This with 390hp 502's. There's no rhyme or reason to it, but keeping the lube fresh and cool is a key to Bravo life.

Shame on you.

Take a good look at your propshaft and vertical driveshaft for twisted splines. Landing the boat with the inertia of the rotating mass is very much like launching a drag car with sticky tires or worse. Something has to give and many times the driven gear is only part of the problem!