Liquid_force
Petty Officer 1st Class
- Joined
- May 7, 2003
- Messages
- 318
What a bummer of a weekend. What was supposed to be a tune up for a 3-day wakeboarding vacation to one of the region's sweetest lakes turned into this...<br /><br />Ever since we got the boat (about a year ago), it's had an intermittent "clunk" in the drive only at low throttle, just before getting on plane. It happened so infrequently that I didn't think much of it, and when I DID ask people who are fairly knowledgeable about OMC about it I never got much of an answer, and certainly nothing about needing to have it looked at ASAP.<br /><br />I read through some of Stuart's OMC website and I can even remember saying to myself, "Well, mine doesn't take THAT much force to go in and out of gear." in hindsight, maybe it did. 
<br /><br />We had it out last night and it finally happened. The dreaded "clunk" became regular - once a minute or so. Then all of a sudden it completely let loose - no more gears.<br /><br />Got it off the water and removed the lwr unit drain plug -- there were a few shavings - wonderful . We proceeded to disassemble the lwr unit. The gear teeth themselves look fine, but it appears the infamous clutch-dog has had the edges of the teeth shaved off. Which leads me to believe it may indeed have been a simple cable mis-adjustment that caused all this trouble.<br /><br />I'm having the pro's reassemble it. They said the damage is not that bad compared to some Omc's they've seen, but as of now it's going to be a complete lower gearset replacement.<br /><br />The good news is we found a NEW set on ebay for $185 shipped as opposed to the typical $480 at dougrussell.com et al. The bad news is we're looking at about $350 for labor, plus another $60 or so for the seal kit.<br /> <br />The moral of the story...don't slack off on the maintennance of your OMC. If you're concerned about the way it's shifting AT ALL. Pay the $100 and have it checked out rather than the $500, or $800 or $1000 to have the gears replaced.
<br /><br />We had it out last night and it finally happened. The dreaded "clunk" became regular - once a minute or so. Then all of a sudden it completely let loose - no more gears.<br /><br />Got it off the water and removed the lwr unit drain plug -- there were a few shavings - wonderful . We proceeded to disassemble the lwr unit. The gear teeth themselves look fine, but it appears the infamous clutch-dog has had the edges of the teeth shaved off. Which leads me to believe it may indeed have been a simple cable mis-adjustment that caused all this trouble.<br /><br />I'm having the pro's reassemble it. They said the damage is not that bad compared to some Omc's they've seen, but as of now it's going to be a complete lower gearset replacement.<br /><br />The good news is we found a NEW set on ebay for $185 shipped as opposed to the typical $480 at dougrussell.com et al. The bad news is we're looking at about $350 for labor, plus another $60 or so for the seal kit.<br /> <br />The moral of the story...don't slack off on the maintennance of your OMC. If you're concerned about the way it's shifting AT ALL. Pay the $100 and have it checked out rather than the $500, or $800 or $1000 to have the gears replaced.