Alignment troubles, left to right, only transom left?

[jworth21]

I have a 2003 Glastron with a 5.0 GL and SX-V outdrive. I've had it about a year. I removed the outdrive to replace leaky trim lines. Man has this snowballed. The story I could tell you. Anyway, I cannot for the life of me get it aligned. I've read so many threads about this topic, and I'm at my wits end. I do have the alignment tool, but it's enough out of line you can see it without even having the gimbal bearing in. It's off horizontally. Looking in from the rear it is off to port. Is there any explanation for this short of bad/rotted transom?

Here's some things I've done:
I replaced the main bolts in the front motor mounts.
I moved around the gimbal bearing within it's outer race.
I got a 1" dowel to get it at least close. Even with the bearing out, with this dowel you can clearly see that it's offset to one side. Forget trying to get the alignment tool to engage the coupler with the bearing in. There was enough old grease and gunk on the outside of the coupler that I could see that the tool was smudging it to the one side.
I've attempted to see if there's tension on the bolts that hold the transom plates together. You can't get to many with the engine in it. Of those, none were loose which would have been a clear indication of transom rot. Obviously I can't get to the lower 4 bolts without pulling the motor. I can't find any other evidence of rot. I did recently replace the through-hull fitting low on the transom that goes to the live well. I didn't find any evidence of rot then either.
I've attempted to shift the motor using a big lever (2x4). I can see the motor shift slighty relative to the hull, but I can't seem to get any movement relative to the gimbal housing.

If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears Currently I'm waiting on delivery of a new seal. If anyone has an answer short of pulling the engine and having the transom rebuilt, I am seriously willing to pay a reward. That's the state I'm in.

 

[Awesomeame]

Hmm that's odd. Following. There's no horizontal adjustment with the SX drive. If you had the DP-E or DPX you could move it horizontally. Are the engine mounts the same on both sides of the engine? Like if you swapped them side to side would it move the motor in the correct direction? Have you ever done the alignment on this before where it was perfect?

Have you tried the alignment just starting over from scratch? Turn all the adjusting nuts in one direction and go from there?

Fully loosen the upper locking nut on both the port- and starboard-side engine mounts. The lower nut is the adjusting nut.

Turn the adjusting nut a half turn in the direction required to raise the engine. On models with side engine mounts, the adjusting nuts must be raised and lowered the same amount on each side. The number of threads exposed on the mount stud must be the same on each side.

Matt

 

[jworth21]

My history with this boat goes back a little less than a year. This is the first time I've had the outdrive off. I've been making these little improvements to the boat all along. This little improvement has turned into a complete cluster.

Here's what I did today which addresses your comments to some degree. I ran up the top bolts on the front mounts and winched the front of the motor up using the thermostat bracket so it was suspended above the adjusting nuts. With no weight on the mounts, I moved them as far to the port side as possible on the assumption that it *might* move the rear of the motor starboard. I tightened down the mounts to the hull. Next I raised the adjusting nuts up until they both just contacted the mount bracket on the engine. Then I released the winch. Presumably this would ensure that there was no twist in the motor in relation to the front and rear mounts. Then I adjusted the motor vertically carefully counting revolutions left and right until that part was relatively close. All this done and I'm basically where I was yesterday. It's still considerably out of line left and right. Incidentally to get the vertical alignment requires pretty much lowering the front motor mounts as far as possible. I don't know if that's a clue, but I'm throwing it out there in case there's something to be gleaned from it.