dave wrote:
I have just taken the foot of my old 40 hp twin ski evinrude . I
wanted to put in a new water pump assembly. The trouble is the drive
shaft stuck into the power head and pulled away from the gear box. I
can't for the life of me free it from the power head and I am trying
to contain the exercise.
Has anyone got any special tricks in freeing the shaft and avoiding a
major pull down.


It's been a while since I did that but....
1. have you remembered to open a little side plate and disconnect
the gear shift rod that comes down from above? Seems to me the cover was
on the right side, and oval?? The connection was a brass/bronze
rectangular piece which had machine bolts in the top and bottom which
clamped it around the rod coming down from the engine..
2. On one engine there was another nut under a zinc with a small fin
that had to be removed to get at it?
3. One one of the ones I worked on (I owned a bunch of old
Johnsons,Evinrude and Mercs as a kid....) there were nuts on each side
of the lower unit, they were set in sort of an alcove, and you could put
the square end of a cold chisel on top of the nut and use the leverage
of the nut winding up the bollt/stud to help pry the lower unit downward
about the height of the nut.....

My memory was every time I had a hard time getting the lower unit to
drop it was *always* because I had missed one of the nuts in the lower
unit, not the actual shaft being stuck in the powerhead

good luck,

remember you have to clean the shaft real good to get the impeller to
slide down it....or was that the old Merc?

Have fun,

Jonathan


--
I am building my daughter an Argie 10 sailing dinghy, check it out:
http://home.comcast.net/~jonsailr