"Josh Assing" wrote
Does anyone have any experience with SEI outdrives?

I don't have any personal experience with SEI, but this was over in
rec.boats.cruising recently:

From: Don W
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 16:29:58 GMT
Subject: Experience with SEI Sterndrive, was Ad: Sterndrive Engineering
....
I had a mechanic install an SEI drive on my 1986 Maxum last year. The drive
looked well made and had a very good finish on it, but it had serious gear
noise right out of the box. The mechanic and another sterndrive mechanic
that I had look at it thought that it had been incorrectly shimmed at the
factory.

We contacted the factory and they said to run it for ten hours, and if it
was still making the noise they would warranty the drive, although we would
have to pay for the removal and re-installation (~$600).

We took the boat on a long trip up the lake with the idea of putting the
hours on it, and unfortunately hit a submerged rock with the lower unit on
the way back. Obviously, that voided the warranty. The funny thing was
that the SEI drive sounded better with the crushed torpedo, and water mixed
in the oil than it ever did before the strike. That lends some credence to
the idea that the drive was incorrectly setup at the factory, because the
strike probably pushed the gears closer together.

I then bought a factory new Mercruiser outdrive to put on the boat, put it
on myself, and had no more trouble with the outdrive.

I think that SEI makes a good product, and hope that they are successful
with it, but in checking around found that a lot of people were having
trouble with the "gear noise" problem about that time. They may have found
and fixed the problem by now.