I think the old alpha drive finally broke....

[greg82255]

Hello,

I am running a 400ish horsepower 383 through a 1986 gen 1 alpha drive. I was cruising around yesterday at about 30 mph, not too fast maybe 2500-3000 rpm and all of a sudden i lost power. The engine was still running, and revved like crazy, but I wasn't moving forward. I took the boat out of gear, put it back in, and nothing. Put it in reverse, nothing. The motor runs but the boat doesn't move. When I got towed back to the dock and pulled it out of the water, I put the boat in forward gear and had my friend spin the prop backwards and looked at the coupler/driveshaft connection inside the boat. it wasn't turning, so it wasn't the coupler, thank god, it's something in the drive. Any guesses what might have happened or how to diagnose? It's also not the prop hub- I checked that too. any chance it could be something simple like a shift cable adjustment? I doubt it, but one can hope. Any thoughts or tests to run would be appreciated.

 

[ktbarrentine]

Re: I think the old alpha drive finally broke....

Hmmm... sounds like something simple alright (JK!).... Like on a drive that vintage, I would put my money on a broken vertical shaft at the O-ring groove (where it enters the upper drive splines). Could also be stripped upper gears.... easy enough to check by pulling the top cover off the upper part of the drive (four bolts). You didn't mention anything about water temps. Once you lost "drive" you would have also lost your water flow. Time to drain drive oil, check for metal, pull the drive, split it apart and see what ya got. Also check the u-joints.

 

[greg82255]

Re: I think the old alpha drive finally broke....

Hmmm... sounds like something simple alright (JK!).... Like on a drive that vintage, I would put my money on a broken vertical shaft at the O-ring groove (where it enters the upper drive splines). Could also be stripped upper gears.... easy enough to check by pulling the top cover off the upper part of the drive (four bolts). You didn't mention anything about water temps. Once you lost "drive" you would have also lost your water flow. Time to drain drive oil, check for metal, pull the drive, split it apart and see what ya got. Also check the u-joints.

Ahhh... Totally forgot about the water pump being in the drive. It only ran for about 30 seconds after this happened, so it's probably alright. I guess I'll pull the drive apart and take a look. Probably going to end up buying one of those SEI replacements no matter what I find..

 

[FreeBeeTony]

Re: I think the old alpha drive finally broke....

Just wondering.........have you had a heavy right hand? Doing hole shots etc....?

 

[greg82255]

Re: I think the old alpha drive finally broke....

Just wondering.........have you had a heavy right hand? Doing hole shots etc....?

Been trying to go easy with the right hand. But I just found the problem. I went to drain the gear lube, and there wasn't any. Rookie mistake. Forgot to fill it up I was so eager to use the boat. Pulled the top cap, upper gears were destroyed - not even a tiny shred of teeth left on them. Going to start a new thread about which gear ratio to buy in the non-repair section.

 

[Eric 3.7LX Alpha 1]

Re: I think the old alpha drive finally broke....

D'OH!!!!! :facepalm:

 

[FreeBeeTony]

Re: I think the old alpha drive finally broke....

Wow............that stinks!!!