Hello all, I am brand new here and would very much appreciate some expert feedback.
First, some background... I recently purchased a 1990 17.8 ft Chaparral ski boat with a mercruiser alpha 1 4 cyl.
After going out a few times, I spent my last trip mainly in the back and bow seats relaxing with two friends taking turns driving. Apparently nobody was paying attention to the depth finder because it got to about 2 ft when I took over. Within 10 seconds, while steering away from shore at idle speed, we hit something. I later learned of a buried wall that can take out props when the water is shallow. Lesson learned, if I ever feel like the water is shallow I should shut down and trim up immediately. Anyway, motor stalled but started right back up. No forward or reverse movement and the engine started to overheat a bit so I shut her off and paddled to shore.
Back on the trailer, prop spins freely in neutral, doesn't spin CCW in forward, and has a rachety kind of click in the other direction. Same for reverse.
Took off the top cap and I could see the vertical shaft sort of spin a tiny bit when moving the prop back and forth. Not sure if that should fully rotate or not but there was definitely some movement.
Next I pulled the drain plug on the bottom. There were definitely some metal shards stuck to the screw
Removed the outdrive. First thing I noticed was that the shift cable wasn't really secure. I'm thinking though that it is secured by the other half of the case?
U joints look good, connection to vertical shaft looks good. The shaft that goes into the boat appears to have metal shavings inside of the splines. I scraped some out and tried to pick up with a magnet but they did not attract (maybe that's not good news since I believe the coupler is aluminum). It's tough to see much going into the engine so I can't say for sure what, if anything, is messed up in there.
I do think this will require a new coupler but was hoping to get some opinions before I try to pull the motor and get to work on that. Any other advice would be very much appreciated.
Thanks so much.
First, some background... I recently purchased a 1990 17.8 ft Chaparral ski boat with a mercruiser alpha 1 4 cyl.
After going out a few times, I spent my last trip mainly in the back and bow seats relaxing with two friends taking turns driving. Apparently nobody was paying attention to the depth finder because it got to about 2 ft when I took over. Within 10 seconds, while steering away from shore at idle speed, we hit something. I later learned of a buried wall that can take out props when the water is shallow. Lesson learned, if I ever feel like the water is shallow I should shut down and trim up immediately. Anyway, motor stalled but started right back up. No forward or reverse movement and the engine started to overheat a bit so I shut her off and paddled to shore.
Back on the trailer, prop spins freely in neutral, doesn't spin CCW in forward, and has a rachety kind of click in the other direction. Same for reverse.
Took off the top cap and I could see the vertical shaft sort of spin a tiny bit when moving the prop back and forth. Not sure if that should fully rotate or not but there was definitely some movement.
Next I pulled the drain plug on the bottom. There were definitely some metal shards stuck to the screw
Removed the outdrive. First thing I noticed was that the shift cable wasn't really secure. I'm thinking though that it is secured by the other half of the case?
U joints look good, connection to vertical shaft looks good. The shaft that goes into the boat appears to have metal shavings inside of the splines. I scraped some out and tried to pick up with a magnet but they did not attract (maybe that's not good news since I believe the coupler is aluminum). It's tough to see much going into the engine so I can't say for sure what, if anything, is messed up in there.
I do think this will require a new coupler but was hoping to get some opinions before I try to pull the motor and get to work on that. Any other advice would be very much appreciated.
Thanks so much.
