Replacing Oil Seal Carrier

[stevedar]

I am having a hard time getting this to come out. Gently prying is not working.

My question is, do I really have to do this? The one that is in there looks great - could I just replace the impeller in the water pump and put in some nice new gaskets and call it good?

The boat is a 1997 Maxum, LX3.0, Alpha One Gen II without too many hours on it. Used it a lot from 1997 - 2001 and a lot less since then, maybe 2 or 3 times per year max. We've got it all tore apart because we haven't done much maintenance on it for the past 10 years, but I am starting to wonder if we haven't reached some point of diminishing returns...

 

[John_S]

Re: Replacing Oil Seal Carrier

Are you prying from both sides at the same time? Shouldn't be that hard. I believe the o-rings on the carrier keep the water out of the lower drive, so it would be important, given its 10 years old. As far as condition, you are only seeing the top and not the o-rings. That being said, the two I have removed from mine look good.

I always get the Merc kit which includes the housing vs just an impeller.

Excuse me for saying this, but this is what I am hearing: "I haven't done much/any maintenance in ten years, and want to know if it is OK to skimp on what I am doing". ???

 

[stevedar]

Re: Replacing Oil Seal Carrier

So we got the old seal out, by carefully drilling pilot holes into the seal and then installing screws about 1/2" deep into the seal. We could then pry on the screw head to remove the seal.
We tried to install the new seal but could not get it to fit all the way down. Tried several times before realizing that the replacement part was not the correct part. The alignment tabs on the bottom of the oil seal carrier assembly didn't match the original. Unfortunately my removal technique ruined the old seal carrier, so we can't just swap seals over (not to mention the lack of special tools for this procedure). We will have to wait untill Harbor Marine opens tomarrow morning to try and get the correct part from them. We will have to take the old one with use this time, since they seam to struggle with getting us the correct parts there. Hopefully we can just exchange the incorrect seal which came with the kit, for the correct one.

 

[John_S]

Re: Replacing Oil Seal Carrier

What is the brand and part number of the kit you have?

 

[stevedar]

Re: Replacing Oil Seal Carrier

Sierra 18-3147

Then it says:

REPLACES MERCURY 817275T4
GEN-II & MERCURY O/B 3.0L DFI

 

[John_S]

Re: Replacing Oil Seal Carrier

That should be the right kit. I have only used the Merc OEM, so don't know if you are dealing with a Sierra issue. On sierra parts I have purchased, some seem fine and appear the same/similar quality as Merc, while others I have noticed things that seem to have been done to make it a "value" part.

According to MercruiserParts.com, the seal within the carrier changed mid-M serial numbers, but don't know if that could cause the issue you have.

Also, in a picture of the parts included in the sierra kit, I did not see the tool to correctly set the water pump shaft seal. Maybe it is just missing from the picture. It is a hard plastic ring that prevents you from compressing the seal down too much.

 

[stevedar]

Re: Replacing Oil Seal Carrier

Ok, here's our dilemma, with pictures. I finally found the Mercury dealer so I can get genuine parts and they sold me an impeller and a new oil carrier seal which I photographed.

The problem, and maybe it's not a problem at all, is that the new oil carrier seal doesn't slide down into the metal part in the bottom. It looks like is should, but the tabs on the oil carrier seal come out to about 1/8" of the edge, but the metal plate below it has about 1/4" of metal around the edge.

The net result is that the oil carrier seal does not slide all the way down. It now sits up about 1/8" whereas before it was perfectly flush with the unit it was mounted on. The so-called "wrench" at Mercury said that I should just pop the impeller on top of that and not worry that the O-ring on the oil carrier seal is now a lot higher in the hole than it used to be.

For the record, we are now armed with a gen-u-ine Mecury Impeller Replacement Kit (47-43026K06) and a QuickSilver carrier assembly (807929A 1).

I suppose another option is to cut the tabs on the new (yellow) one until it does fit down into the hole. The people down at the Merc Dealership were downright rude about helping me with it so I hope someone here will have seen this before and can offer a hand?