Ok, here's my situation. I am cruising on the lake yesterday at about half throttle in my '88 bayliner Ciera (OMC 5.0) and all of a sudden something in my outdrive completely lets loose. Everything is normal in neutral, but when I shift Fwd or Rev there is a grinding sound and the prop barely spins. Since, I have removed the stern drive and inspected the output splines, the gimble bearing, and the u-joint and yoke. It all looks fine to me. I pulled the top cover off of the upper unit and the gears look fine also. But obviously there is metal sparkles in the oil. When I finally drained the oil out of the lower unit there was metal flakes and chunks galore! So, I assume (being a mechanic by trade but fairly new to boating) that the lower unit gears are mangled. Havent torn it down that far yet, but Just a wild guess. My question is, since all the metal was basically in the lower unit, should I just try to just replace the lower and salvage the upper or am I wasting my time all together? When the damage happened I was at least smart enough not to try to run the drive anymore, so as not to flush metal chunks through the whole oil system. But regardless, Do i need to cough up the money and just replace the entire stern drive?
