I have never pulled the motors out of any of my boats before. This winter I want to paint my engine compartment an have motors gone thru. Can anyone give me a basic step by step process for removing them? What I am not sure of is if I should remove outdrives and drive shaft? Any help would be great, want to start planning so I can get a jump on it in a couple of weeks.

This is assuming that your boat has Bravo drives and is not using transmissions. Some engine bays have enough room to slide the engines forward enough, so as to leave the drives on to pull the engines. However, the drives must come off, to re-install, so pulling the drives first is usually step 1. Then simply disconnect the few cables ( ie: battery, main plug ), the couple of oil lines ( ie: Power steering ), that go to the engine, disconnect the exhaust. Most times you can leave the exhaust right on the engine, just disconnect the tails from the tips. Unbolt the mounts, if you have offshore mounts, get a hoist on the engine to take the weight, BEFORE unbolting the mounts. Then haul away. Its a very simple process.

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