Another thing to consider when servicing this style gearcase…..
Sitting home with a "broken wing", can do very little except think about stuff.
I found the impeller had shreaded/melted/just the hub left when I pulled this gearcase off the engine. Needless to say, I went "on the hunt" for impeller pieces while pulling the powerhead apart. Nothing in the water tube, saw nothing in any of the water passages either….This debris had to go somewhere, doesn’t seem like it all could have been expelled from the cooling system….
This gearcase has a hidden "chamber" under the plastic cover. The water is drawn up from the screen in the exhaust snout, it goes through this "chamber", then through the plastic top, before ending up under the impeller plate.
I feared some of the debris could be down inside the screen, or in the passage, and did my best to try to blow it out. I even back flushed with parts washing fluid which expelled a few impeller pieces out of the top passage…I couldn’t help but fear that more debris could be hidden down there, but couldn’t see much with a light. I started to think about how the gearcase water passage was laid out under that pesky plastic cover. I really wanted to avoid pulling that plastic cover off, these plastic covers are a royal pain to clean, and tough to reseal onto the gearcase. Salt water really destroys these covers, so I am used to just replacing them. Availability and pricing has curbed that practice! Try replacing that plastic screen in the gearcase, ha! $100 worth of some universal screen is the replacement here.
I wrestled with this for too long before deciding I better pull the cover off, and look what I found:
A lesson learned for sure. These pieces could have plugged up the system or damaged the new water pump!