bravo III steering seal leak- advice needed.

skennelly

Back story.  Winter of 2016 I had a gimbal ring, upper shaft and seal replaced.  Ever since I still noticed water in the bilge and this season determined that the steering area was wet.  At the beginning of this season Spring 2017 I told my boat shop about it and they said they would look at it when fall came.

well fall has come and they just looked at it and got back to me.  Said that the new upper pin they installed has pitting and corrosion on it and that they contacted mercruiser and mercruiser said there might be an electrolysis issue????

Here is the new pin they installed in Winter of 2016 and now are saying it's corroded and causing the leak to continue.

This just seems very weird to me.

frenchship

I think they should have installed S/S one. Mercruiser has them.

skennelly

Does this seem strange?  Wouldn't my drive being showing major signs of corrosion too?

BellevilleMXZ

Ya weird.....should see other issues.....that looks a lot older than a year!

jmichels

Buy the NuWave one thats stainless and its manufactured to much tighter tolerances. Not to mention cheaper! Its a no brainer. 

Seems maybe they damaged seal when installing or forgot a seal or bushing when installing.......

craigswardmtb

Yep you can see the pitting. Mine was much worse but it was 10 years old two. They may have damaged the seal on install. It seems strange to fail that quick. They absolutely should have went with an SS pin. 

skennelly

I'm waiting for them to get back to me...kind of worried they are going to make excuses.

skennelly

Dumb question maybe...but has anybody ever contacted Mercruiser regarding problems such as this?  I'd like them to look at the pictures I have and tell me what they think happened.  I'm not sure I'm on board with electrolysis causing this after just a year.

frenchship

This much pitting and corrosion after one year, I would wonder if it was replace to start with.
 If you take a look at where the seal is located it seem to have groove the shaft, in one year.......

skennelly

@frenchship - Agreed...that's what I'm trying to prove....they did multiple things at the same time.  Gimbal ring, bearing, bellows ect...to the tune of $4300

They haven't told me they wouldn't fix it yet...but now I have my doubts about their entire business.  Really shi$$y feeling.

Ian

Looks like the one I took out last winter after 13 years of use and I would think you'd have more issues. Remember the seal that goes in there seals at the base of the large square section to the round part. Its a tight seal there, the seal is all of an eighth of an inch thick and you use a tool to insert it and tap it home fully and correctly and it needs to go in the right way up. I'd be asking to see that also, if a year old it should come out clean and in good condition.
The manual states "6. Tighten locknut until a clearance of .002 - .010 in. (0.05 - 0.25 mm) exists between lower swivel pin washer and gimbal housing mount." so it's tight and shouldn't let water through. When I did mine I wasn;t sure what sealed this and had to search for it, not on the gimbal ring drawing but the housing drawing so without a careful look I could have missed it. And the old wasn't obvious either in seeing it there.

Push as a warranty item, even if that pitting is real and a bigger issue, I wouldn't expect leaking immediately after, you'd have only see it over time.

jmichels

you may have an electrical ground issue or back feeding issue on the boat. Happened to me years back when my radio stopped working suddenly in spring and I couldn't find any fuses or breakers popped anywhere so I ran a new feed to the radio off another circuit and powered it up. Seemed to work fine although I kept hearing some static every once and a while and suddenly some random things started to not work correctly . All electrical. 

Well mid season I pulled the boat to clean and and was awe struck at what I saw on the drives and bottom. My bottom was painted with the ablative copper stuff. The zincs were basically totally wasted off, had this rust like electrolysis coating on all my props and the bottom of the bottom even had what almost looked like a burn mark in the paint on the bottom.  Then I started thinkin man there has to be something electrical going on here and then it dawned on me about the radio issue. Well I went to pull the battery switch panel because one of the switches wasnt working right and I discovered a fuse holder and ground wire behind there that the previous owner tied in for the radio. Well apparently the fuse holder some how got exposed to ground and was back feeding power to ground through the output wire.  I removed and replace the wiring and fuse and put it all back together and removed my new feed wire and bam everything back to normal. It was crazy what just a couple volts of electricity getting into the ground system can do. I would look in that direction. Possibly they didnt reconnect the ground straps on the transom plate when they did it too. Good luck !

Michael T

......very little stray electricity in the water is a very bad thing. Cathode disconnection, poor grounds, no or inoperative galvanic isolator and depleted "zincs" quickly play havoc with a boat's underwater gear.

davidbrooks

@Michael T brought up a good point.  Did they look at the Mercathode system and see if it is hooked up and working?  What is the condition of the anodes?, are any other parts that are exposed having the same thing happening.  If not then that is a pretty compelling argument the issue is just this one part and seal.

skennelly

@davidbrooks - still waiting for them to get back to me.  Anodes were changed in the Spring seems to be normal wear on them when I pulled the boat a week ago.  Drive looks good...no signs of unusual corrosion...I did paint the drive over the winter.

I'm assuming they will check the mercathode system during their investigation into their theory that it's electrolysys

skennelly

Mercruiser charges $20 per phone call for tech support?

Michael T

@skennelly.....geez.....I would owe them a couple of grand...no more than that! I used to talk performance stats with the guys in Stillwater for like a half hour at a time!

skennelly

So my boat shop emailed me back saying they couldn't find an electrolysys problem.  They replaced the steering parts under warranty and everything is put back together.  I'm glad they took care of it...but why the parts failed after just a year is beyond me.

Ian

Ask for exactly what they replaced.

skennelly

Finally got to the boat this past weekend to winterize and inspect what was repaired AGAIN.

They replaced under warranty

1.  Steering tiller arm
2.  Upper steering shaft ( steering pin)
3.  Steering shaft seal.

It all looks good to me now.  We'll see when we splash in next Spring.

Ian

Any chance they give you the parts or at least show you? Did they put in a stainless pin?