I have an 85' sea ray seville, 170hp 3.7L merc with a alpha outdrive. My question is if I remove the outdrive for maintainance, do I need any special tools for alignment on reinstallation or can I just slide the unit back in and tighten it up?
other items you'll need to work on your drive are the oem service manual. http://www.boatfix.com/merc/Servmanl/srvcovr.pdf you want #6 + some gimble brg. grease for the gimble brg and ujoints. and spline grease for the coupler. also a torque wrench capable of 50 ft. lbs to reinstall the nuts to the proper torque when re installing the drive.
Simply removing and reinstalling the outdrive does not affect the alignment. But as Ziggy mentions, you need the alignment bar to CHECK the alignment. And that's a good idea when you have the outdrive off. If the alignment is off, your bar / tool will help you adjust the engine accordingly. Then you can re-install the outdrive with the confidence that it is all aligned property.
But to answer your question... no, you do not necessarily need to align the engine just because you removed the outdrive.
