GEARS.. GEARS... and... MORE GEARS...

[Rootsy]

since i only have experience with sterndrives i HOPE someone here has some intimate knowlege of some outboard gears. MY SS took half a tooth off of the pinion... i suspect that it was fractured when the upper went after that log got in the way in kentucky... damage was minimal to the case BUT this thing has a few twists to it..

the gearcase is an outboard CLE... the last rebuild has 3.0 litre sportmaster gears put into it... obviously used gears from my inspection of em... a lot of surface rust and a lot of use on the pressure side of the gears... Now i've been told that i can put anything i want in this case.. i just have to shim accordingly... so this means i can use 1) alpha 1 gears 2) 3.0 litre sportmaster gears 3) 2.5 litre outboard gears... BUT which gears are the STRONGEST. i have to say it comes down to the 3.0 litre or alpha gears... i was told that the pinion is larger on the 3.0 litre than on the 2.5 litre stuff...

so if someone here has actual knowledge of some OB gears and what they will withstand and what not let me have it eh... or a contact that may be able to enlighten me some what would be appreciated... otherwise it looks like alpha gears will go back into it...

Thank ya eh

JR - fabricator of sterndrive tools :rolleyes:

[GeneD]

Now Rootsy, I would never have suspected you of this accusation... :eek!:
But let me just say that those gears were brand new out of the box, I was there when they were removed from the package at Lake X.
To find out what they are, and how to get new ones, call Craig Collabella at Collabella Performance in St. Cloud, FLA.
He's the one who did the conversion and knows what to get. Tell him it's my old drive.
Oh, and by the way, standard Alpha gears will not fit into that lower case. It was designed similar to the outboard and the gears are smaller in diameter in order to fit into the case. If you get the gears from Craig, more than likely all you'll have to do is swap out the gears. The shims are case sensitive due to casting and machining tolerance differences. The same shims should be able to be used in reassembly. He assembled that at Lake X, and used all the proper measuring devices. He ended up putting the same thickness shims in, but they were new, right out of the shim drawer.
Sorry to hear about your grenading, it happens to all of us at one time or another...
Also, weren't you spinning that thing beyond recommended RPM's? (6000+) I wonder if that has something to do with the wear?

[marcdups]

Rootsy, an alpha ss have the strongest gears, there is a guy I know that has forgotten more than we will all know, shoot ne an E-mail at marcdups@yahoo.com and I will give you a ph #, I know for a fact that he has a lower alpha ss in tip top shape, a spare won't hurt and you can pick his brains!!!

[GeneD]

Yeah? And what was the result?
FYI, the drive was purchased from Craig also...

[Rootsy]

Sorry Gene, if the gears were new i apologize but i have A LOT of experience with mechanical things and these things had A TON of pitting and wear on the pressure side of the teeth and A WHOLE CRAPLOAD of surface rust. so either these things were lying around in the moisture and air or the drive had been sitting for a long time with no oil in it and vented to atmosphere... and since the day it arrived here it has been filled with Merc Hi-Perf... i am not saying anything was defective cause obviously i ran the piss out of it last year without an issue other than the clunkly outboard shifter mechanism which i really need to do something about. this shifting crap is getting old... as well as the 1/4 inch of thrust in the propshaft... that isn't helping the whole shifting thing any... or gear life...

yes the drive has seen 6000 rpm... ONCE... for about 5 seconds and has never been above that... it has seen 5800 a couple of times for less than 30 seconds... and the rest has been below that... mostly 5300 - 5500 rpm... the log i whacked in kentucky is what set the breakage off this spring i believe... i have the missing ppg and dent in the CLE to prove it...

and yes i have spoken to craig colabella at least 4 times since i bought this thing and he isn't a whole lot of help... he has taken little time to try and answer a few of my questions but his memory doesn't quite recollect EXACTLY what he did to that thing... so i've pretty much given up this route... and yes i did tell him it was your old drive... so if you have any info i'd appreciate you passing it on eh.

FYI... the last time i spoke to him.. a week ago... he told me that i can put alpha gears, 3 litre gears, 2.5 gears etc in the thing and i must shim accordingly to get backlashes correct. the 3.0 litre pinion is pretty large...

madpoodle, if you have some lower alpha gears on the shelf do you think you could take a few dimensions for me as far as thickness, OD's etc? i can compare to the 3.0 Litres then.

as far as shimming being the same.. no 2 gears and or bearings / races are dimensionally the same... especially the stackup of tolerances... therefore you MUST measure for every new set of gears and or bearings and reshim accordingly. NO TWO cases are dimensionally the same... no matter how good the tooling... everything has a tolerance.. .and trust me.. in manufacturing you exploit it to the outer limits...

it'll be back together without a doubt... gearcase was patched up last week :) thanks to doug L. i get time to finally get all the part crap figured out and i can order stuff and we should be running again by august...

so anyone wanna swap an SS, GEN II transom Assy and GEN II sterndrive for an entire bravo setup and imco shortie :D

oh wait that's for the 18 ;)

JR

[GeneD]

Sorry Poodle, Sorry Roots, haven't been around in a while and soon as I get on, it seemed as if I was getting slammed. And I've got a ton of things on my mind, and I'm not thinking quite as clear as I would like...
Okay, Roots....
The gears were new, no surface rust - only packing grease. In fact, he had ordered two sets of these gears, one for me, and one for his stock.
The drive had been sitting for a while, over a year I think, but it was always filled with Hi-Perf and prior to that it was changed every month or so with the oil Craig gave me from Lake X. (I had over 5 gallons of it, I thought why not be a trooper and change it out as often as I could!)
I don't have the gears in front of me, I can't say what it is that you saw. I'd like to think you know what you're looking at and can report it accurately. The gears are not machined from a solid billet, they start out in life as a casting - so it's been my experience. Of course I don't know for sure as I've never seen Mercury's gear factory. Maybe the pits are due to poor casting?
Good luck in fixing the drive. Sure, with your engine combo, it would behoove :eek!: you to get a Bravo.
As for Craig, he's super busy doing all kinds of things in the race circuit. Not only is he an official in the new OSS (soon to be the defunct OSS) but he does the drives for practically every raceboat out there. Or let's just say most of them in my circuit. He probably doesn't see a lot of business coming his way in Alphas. I'll speak to him next time I see him. When I blew my lower, he told me to take the numbers off the gears and buy new ones, I did just that and when he put it together, we noticed that the gears were too big to go in. That is when things got wierd and he had to think about it for two weeks before he realized what happened. His thinking was that the drive was a prototype and they used regular Alpha gears and cut them down to fit.
On another note, my old girlfriend Tina (the old Donzigirl) who is someone a lot of you know...died on July 2 from long term alcoholism. How a person that was so smart could be so stupid is just mind boggling.

[MOP]

Jamie is the pitting just on the wear surface, only reason I ask is I have a vague memory about being told something about about that. I know we have to have a real metal guy that can shed some light.

[Rootsy]

Thanks for the info gene...

ok boys and girls... if any of oyu have extra alpha gears hanging arouind could you do some measuring for me? here are a few photos of my existing gears... dimensioned... at the bottom of the page :)

gene.. not per se pitted... but a lot of gear wear, i don't have any idea how many hours you had on her. if you look at the original 300 tempest engine brochure you can see this drive hanging off the back of that motor... there is a lot of deep surface rust in the clutch dog area as well as around the OD of the gear... no biggie... don't sweat it... i just want all the info i can gather so i can put it together and give it the best chance for life...

i am about 99.99999999999% sure that mercury DOES NOT make thier own gears... the likes of precision gear or richmond manufacture most of the gearsets out there today... i just don't know which particular manufacturer cuts em... the gear teeth are literally broached (hobbed) with a special cutter and the gears teeth are finally lapped together after heat treat.. this si why the forward and pinion gears come as a set and the reverse is seperate (it gets little use vs forward). if this is not done you'd make a CRAPLOAD of heat... this is also why most gearsets which are lapped have "timing" marks on em so they get indexed properly. i was very surprised when the new uppers were not marked...

one last thought... if you can cut a gear... you all are better than me... a file won't even nick em, trust me i tried this about 2 weeks ago on the uppers... they have to be ground... yes they are THAT hard... and that hardness is DEEP... i had to use a water cooled abrasive cutoff wheel to cut em...

so the saga and mystery continue... we shall succeed... ok Mr. Baxter you best get hooked up on the ole outboard part system ;)

JR - we don't get F*#$$#$@#ed.. we do the F&*(&(*&ing... :smash:

[GeneD]

Roots, I used that boat most every weekend for a year. The drive blew the lower on New Year's Eve in 2000? Long time ago, can't remember.
Don't know much about the clutch dogs, but I did blow a lower set in my old Alpha 1 because the clutch dogs wore out. Unrelated to your problem I think...
Now that I think about it, I've been through a lot with that boat in the short time (couple of years) it was on the water. Price you pay to play I guess.
I have the parts breakdown of the Alpha SS, I could copy it and send it to you, or maybe I could get it scanned. I'll see about it this week. I'll be busy, busy, busy this week and this coming weekend. In fact, I have to be in surgery in 45 minutes, so I'll buzz off for now...

[rayjay]

Jamie is the pitting just on the wear surface, only reason I ask is I have a vague memory about being told something about about that. I know we have to have a real metal guy that can shed some light.

I'm not the "real metal" guy MOP is referring to, but I am pretty sure I can shed some light on this. One of our former mechanics was an IDBA Pro-Comp champ for a number of years. These bikes run (or ran when I remember) in the 5's at right around 200. They make a LOT of power for a bike. Once we broke one in on our dyno to help him out when they didn't have enough time before a meet, he was on the way there when he stopped by. It made 250+ rwhp w/o nitrous but with the retarded advance for the nitrous, which is something like well over 300 at the crank, and God only knows with the Nitrous turned on. Some of the gearing for a bike is before the trans meaning the trans, and its gears, is under a lot of pressure. Fast by Gast was one of his sponsors, so he always had the best transmissions. What we learned is that once you exceed the limits on the heat and surface treatment it is as if the treatments no longer exist. Paul Gast, a nice plain spoken midwestern guy explained that the treatment was like ice. You can put all the weight on it you want up until the limits of the ice to hold weight. But once you exceed that weight, even by a little bit, the breakdown of the ice (or wear surface) was extremely quick. Also, once the surface starts to break down, the treated metal works just like an abrasive that is harder than what it's abrading.

rayjay

[Forrest]

On another note, my old girlfriend Tina (the old Donzigirl) who is someone a lot of you know...died on July 2 from long term alcoholism. How a person that was so smart could be so stupid is just mind boggling.

GeneD, it's great that you are back, but I can't believe that I'm hearing about Tina passing away. She always seemed to have a great time no matter where she was or what she was doing. Our condolences for the family and her daughter. :frown:

[younger]

How come no one gives much attention to the 1.32 alpha gear set. This gear set as most know ran behind early bbc. I have run this set behind many sbc hp motors with great resaults. Running smaller props less load on drive. Currently running genII 1.32 in 16 with sbc 400+hp spinning 19 laser II @ 5600 for miles! If I remember correctly these gears and bearing are a little tougher than standard issue gear and bearings from merc.

[BigGrizzly]

Rayjay, Nice to hear your alive, You still remember that stuff. Us old dogs arer hard to get rid of.

[smoothie]

Root,
Ask these guys at: http://hydroracer.net/ they should be able to help ya.

[Rootsy]

Root,
Ask these guys at: http://hydroracer.net/ they should be able to help ya.


Rick,

this is an OLD thread someone revived.. i've long since fixed her and run her and sold her... took some investigation but i got it together CORRECTLY... with better parts...

as for upper gears.. just go with the 1.5 HD gearset and call it done...