04 B3 Salty 305 in a Splendor Cat, Son's boat. I volunteered to do boots and bellows, shift cable, ran into grief. Initial issue was water restriction due to Bravoitis.

In the process of repairing Bravoitis, (water inlet hose collapsed from corrosion blocking water supply) Gooseneck bolt (Water Inlet Housing at inside back of transom hard suction line attached to) snapped off. The only way to properly attach the gooseneck back on would be to remove engine and drill that bolt out and retap hole. Luckily when the bolt snapped off it left a small portion of the bolt sticking out, maybe 4 or 5 threads. I sliced the head off a T-nut and screwed it onto the remaining 5 threads and essentially making a female stud out of the snapped-off bolt, drilled the backside of the housing to accept the increased diameter of the T-nut stud. This gave me enough to properly support the Goosenedc from side loads but not able to torque it down much at all. Just able to snug it up to where it is not going anywhere when the hard suction hose is attached. This also means that the style 2 of the water inlet hose which requires rubber bushing to be placed inside and torqued down would not work. There is not enough thread on the repaired stud to torque it down without stripping it out. Arrghhk what to do now?

The new water hose kit that came in the boots and below package has an updated gooseneck that is slightly larger ID to accept the plastic along with the rubber bushing on the end of the water inlet hose of style 2
https://www.glmmarine.com/pdf/Instru-47230.pdf
The plastic end of the water inlet hose is smaller OD and fits inside of the updated gooseneck and the original gooseneck ID was damn near the same as the OD of the updated water inlet hose plastic tube. Hmm, can't torque gooseneck to compress the supplied rubber bushing without fear of stripping the repaired stud, what to do? I used RTV Gray (the import stuff that sets up pretty firm) to glue and lightly torque the gooseneck on without the rubber bushing and the water inlet tune not being installed. Went around to the stern and pressing the water inlet hose plastic tube into the original gooseneck there is about 3/4 to 1 inch of engagement and they fit snuggly together ID to OD with a small gap all the way around the plastic at the hole in the transom. I decided to coat the outside of the plastic tube with 3m Scotch-Weld ( PR-40 industrial grade super glue for rubber and plastic) and shove it up in there tight. Sealed up nicely. The gap around the plastic tube through the hole in the transom plate was packed with Gray RTV as a backup and support. I am pretty confident that the water inlet hose is not going anywhere when the RTV sets up. That gray RTV sets up pretty hard and the super glue likely sealed and held it anyway. The hole in the transom plate that had previously rotted was wire brushed out with a rotary brush, painted, and covered with RTV. I think I like this repair better than the as intended by Merc plan of compressing a rubber bushing. Future water inlet hose could be installed by Dremmel tool off the oetiker clamp which joins the rubber hose to the plastic tube on the original and replacement. That repair is likely 20 years down the road...

I know super glue and RTV sounds like a Redneck fix but let's not overthink it. Water inlet tube is secure and sealed. Gooseneck is lightly torqued and sealed. My only other option was to RnR the engine. I outline this experience in the event anyone else snaps off the bolt for the gooseneck or does not want to risk it. I would even go so far as to perhaps consider NOT attempting to remove the gooseneck if the bolts seem very tight and not risking snapping bolt off. You could simply leave the gooseneck on without risk of snapping bolt and clean the coorsion in the hole from he outside using a round wire brush on a cordless drill. You will of course have to lightly chisel out the old plastic support internal expanding bush. Glue the plastic tube in as I did and RTV the space between the transom hole and plastic portion of water iinlet hose.

I will update this thread at some point with the long-term result. Worse case in my situation is to just go thru hull pickup but that's another can of worms on the Splendor cat hull. I would rather do that than pull the engine.

You may need to pull the engine to get this all straightened out....... but if you can get in there with a mig welder i would thread a nut onto the stud and weld the inside threads to the stud....the heat should break it free at the same time and should come out fairly easy. Ive done that trick a few times on LS aluminum heads that have broken the exhaust screw heads off...works like a charm

Wally we thought about the welding stud thing but very little bolt left. If we welded it and it did NOT come out then we had no plan B other than pulling engine. On this Cat hull space is very limited for an RnR. Also, the diameter of the hole where the water inlet tube passes thru was considerably larger than what Merc intended as the corrosion was severe.

Ran it at the ramp today and water flow is excellent, all sealed up. Gave the water inlet hose a tug test and it is solid in there, probably morso than what it would be if held in by the rubber bushing compressed by the water inlet housing. I will go back and update this thread end of year incase anyone has to try this in the future and finds this thread. It's been years since I have been on the board but I went back and looked up some of my post from when I was wrestling a B&M 250 install and found the advice useful for a friend who was doing a blower install. I really like the format of forums such as this for archiving and finding information as opposed to Facebook forums. FB forums lake proper categories, search function etc. and a LOT of redundancy as no one can find what they are looking for and siumpy ask again. For dirtbikes, as an example there are dozens of FB forums related to one brand of bike (Sherco from France) so some info is on one forum and other info on a different one. That make hard to find what you are looking for.