Should exhaust be venting around gimbal?

[MaxGlide]

I have a Mercury 3.0 with an alpha, one gen one sterndrive. The exhaust bellows has been replaced by an exhaust tube. I tried to post videos but couldn’t. But the exhaust seems to be venting around the gimbal housing, at idle or full speed. Shouldn’t it be venting out the two small holes on the bottom side of the gimbal assembly? As a side note, the exhaust tube is NOT completely inserted into the port on the leg, even with leg all the way down. As a result, the motor is always quite loud, almost like an engine with straight pipes.

 

[tpenfield]

If your outdrive is trimmed up, then you will get some venting out of the tube and not through the prop. If I recall correctly . . . the tube fits loosely over the exhaust flange on the leg portion of the outdrive, so it is never 100% seal.

 

[MaxGlide]

If your outdrive is trimmed up, then you will get some venting out of the tube and not through the prop. If I recall correctly . . . the tube fits loosely over the exhaust flange on the leg portion of the outdrive, so it is never 100% seal.

With the leg all the way down, the exhaust tube is about 1/2' away from connecting to the flange portion of the outdrive. I wonder if there are different length exhaust tubes?

 

[Baylinerchuck]

That’s the primary reason i installed the exhaust bellows on my alpha 1 gen 1. I hated the smell of exhaust. It wasn’t really that much louder because the transom sits pretty low on my Chap, and I noticed no power increase. I got tired of wiping exhaust soot off the bottom of my swim platform and transom. Yeah they are a pain to install, not near as bad as the U-joint bellows on the gen 1. But worth it IMO.