Hi,
I've been recently offered a used coupler as I suspected mine to be shot. I
lifted my 4.3 Merc and removed the old one. Both "new"-used one as well as
the old one looked exactly the same. I inspected the rubber, splines were no
different and looked exactly identical to the smallest detail. Since the
suspected damage was due to the engine misalignment (lots of rattling and
clunking in the back of the engine (sounded like a piston rod broke loose
and was hitting cylinder walls) and I ran the engine dry for about 3x 10-15
sec. (last occurrence with some (not much) blue smoke from behind the
engine, immediately shut down) I wondered how severe the damage could be
with respect to the coupler condition.. Visually there is no way to tell the
difference between the two. Is there any other way to determine how was my
coupler affected, could it be still OK?. What would constitute a definitive
damage to the coupler? Simplest would probably be to drop the boat on the
water but this is out of the question at the moment (engine is still
disconnected). Any suggestions?