It sounds like you popped the spring out of the seal. Fortunately it is from
the lower seal and you can easily change that without any dissasembly of the
drive.

Good luck,
Justin

"mitchmon" wrote in message
ups.com...
We had some damage to the aluminum housing on our Alpha 1 Mercruiser
drive lower unit. Per the manual, we removed it and a local prop shop
replaced the horizontal fins that the ski fin had caused to break.
Upon re-assembly, we found the o-ring for the drive shaft was still in
the upper unit. After a little work, we removed it, but a funny part
fell out also, and we can't find it anywhere on the diagrams. It is
about the size of the o-ring, metal, and is a spring, although very
small. Could this be the guts of an o-ring? I'm buffalo'ed.

Any idears?