Reply To: Small Mercruiser stern drive parts?

[David Stanton]

amuller wrote:

Agreed. What does out of the box thinking consist of in this case?

One thing I don’t like about these two boats is that accessibility for servicing is lousy. I’ve seen stern drive boats in which the engine cover is latched to the transom, and removing it exposes everything. I’m wondering if they installed the drive on these before putting on the deck molding….

The order of assembly when the boat was built varies with the boat manufacturer.

Currently I have a 1996 Glastron with a MerCruiser I/O based on the Chevrolet 4.3 V6. I think the motor could be pulled fairly easy, but getting to some parts – like the oil filter and the block cooling drains with the motor in place is a real challenge! I used to let the oil drain into the bottom of the boat, and with the boat tilted up, drain it out the transom drain hole, floating some of it out because the drain isn’t all the way to the bottom. You can’t remove a drain pan from under it without tilting it enough to spill it. I now use a hand-pump suction drain that screws to the top of the dipstick tube. It doesn’t get sediment to drain from quite the bottom of the oil pan, but it makes changing oil much easier…..except for the filter – I put a couple big rags under it while standing on my head to unscrew it to catch oil that drools out while changing it.

If I get some water under the engine, I can’t reach it all with a sponge, so I suck it out with a wet-dry shop vacuum and that works great! I do that after draining the engine block and other cooling drains into the bottom of the boat for winter. It has a bilge pump, that that leaves 1/2 inch of water under the engine.

Being Chevrolet-based, it’s nice to be able to buy some engine parts, like carb kits, starter, etc, at almost any auto parts store.
Dave