Merc 575sci w/ bravo XZ on a 29' fountain.
Lovely boat, delivers every time.... never had a problem like this in 5 years.

Heard a noise, put in neutral.... revved up, no noise, put in gear, cruised at 3000 rpm for 60 seconds then bang, noise, and no forward.....

Now when i start it, it bangs and clanks....... sounds like a broken U joint.... it's loud.


What do you think? I won't have my trailer and truck down here (NJ Shore) Until Thursday.... although I'm tempted to go home and get it now, so I know what happened.... It's on a pontoon boat lift and I'm not interested in working on it over the water.

Should I have it fixed by a u joint shop or just buy a new part? It's like $1000!!!! WTF!!!!

I broke the center joint on my drive shaft(imco box) and it was nowhere near $1000 to fix. I had to buy the center joint and 2 new ujoints and I have $70.00 in parts plus I went ahead and replaced the bellows so I have a total of $140.00 in the repair and I fixed it myself in about 2 hours.

pull the drive and fix it yourself.if you have a napa store near-by you can probley find it there.if you have put a u-joint in a car before you can do the drive......just rember to greese the u-joint first before installing the drive first.

just to add, make sure you pull the drive before every boating season and Greece them to ensure you get many hours of boating time..

thanks guys.... I'll get it off.

You can work over the water.....here's an old cell pic of a drive change on a floating lift 200+ miles from home. Paid a guy to break into my garage and bring my spare!!!! This one had the little walk-way behind the boat and we found a floating 4x6 platform we tied up under there (hint: we tied a rope to the drive so if it went to the bottom we could fish it back out!!!)

I love this forum. It's the best one I've been on...

Welcome to OSO...none better or even close

Hope it's not what happened to me.......upper gears shredded in xr drive. Drive stopped dead. Engine kept spinning snapping the input shaft and wrecking the u joints and coupler too. Bought a new drive, coupler, gimbal bearing, misc parts, etc.

I hope not. I'll post an update on Friday.... unfortunately I can't get it done until I have my truck and trailer handy.

As for being here, I'm stoked. i have a tendency to go overboard with my hobbies and make businesses from them..... stay tuned