Is there supposed to be a sleeve over my drive shaft in the space between the gimbal bearing and engine coupler? Currently there’s nothing on mine so the gimbal seal and o-ring on the shaft do absolutely nothing. I’ve looked at parts manuals online according to my serial number and it doesn’t show anything.

No there is no sleeve .

Do you know what this o-ring is for and what does the seal at the gimbal bearing do? There’s a huge gap around my gimbal seal and drive shaft and grease flings out of mine into the bilge since I have a greasable bearing.

Ayuh,..... The o-ring by the splines helps hold grease in the coupler,....
The other 2 locate the gimbal bearing,.....
Yer over-greasing the gimbal if it's slinging grease into the boat,.....
That seal holds very little,....
Pull yer drive, 'n clean out the excess grease from the bellows,.... that'll help with the mess,....

That’s why I don’t understand the O-ring and seal. The o-ring isn’t even close to sealing against the coupler and the gimbal seal is way to big to seal against the driveshaft.

My coupler looks like this.


Wondered if it takes a coupler like this for the O-ring to do anything.

second pic is a hp coupler, looks like wrong drive shaft for the coupler you have

That it could be. Boat is 1994 and we’ve only had it 7 years now so who knows what someone has done in the past. I just know something wasn’t right there. Not that it causes any issues that I know of other than grease getting into bilge. While it’s apart I’m gonna at least install the sealed gimbal bearing.

Is there Another gimbal seal that would at least ride on the drive shaft since my does nothing for sealing.
I put that seal in when we got the boat so maybe I installed the wrong seal back then but I went off of my serial number for the part number and that’s what I got.