19 years ago I painted my alpha drive,trim tabs,aluminum swim grid braces etc.,along with underwater portion of f/g hull.Used interlux f/g bottomkote.Didnt know any better,seemed like a good idea at the time. Boat was in saltwater all year round,every year, except for twice annual haulouts,repainted the works about May each year.There never were ANY corrosion issues. Prop stayed fine, paint stayed on drive,etc. Zincs lasted 6 mos to a year.Only significant things I did to that drive last 18 years was replace a seal and toward the end did the steering arm.Drive is now over 20 and going strong still.Sure beat the heck out of scrubbing barnacles off several times each summer.Not sure if I just got lucky with that boat or not. Have a new boat now and trying to figure out if I should paint it same. Anybody else had experience with this? I know the paint and drive makers say no, but this example seems to say why not. ps I also heard somewhere that excessive paint caused cooling(of the gearcase) issues. This also never seemed to occur although drive was not heavily loaded(165 hp)
