"Kel Varnsen" wrote in message
...
Greetings All,

New to the group. New to owning a boat, so please forgive my lack of
knowledge, but...

I just a week ago bought a 1991 Sea Ray 185 that was in excellent
condition. The owner was kind enough to take us out briefly on it, and
the boat worked perfectly. However, when we took it out by ourselves,
we had an issue. After getting it undocked and on the water, the
audible alarm went off. Everything seemed ok, but the alarm would go
off. I turned the engine off and restarted it, but the alarm would go
off again. I'm hoping the problem was that I did not trim the motor up
and then back down before getting going. The manual alludes to
something like this.


There are only a few things that will cause the audible alarm to go off.
The first thing you should do when you hear the alarm is to scan your engine
gauges on the helm. You want to look to see that the temperature gauge and
the oil pressure gauge are reading normal, as these are two of the potential
triggers. If either of those gauges read abnormal, you've found your
problem. If those gauges read normal it is likely a low level of lower unit
drive lube in the reservoir. At the front of the engine, there will be a
small white plastic reservoir with a black plastic cap mounted on a bracket.
There will be a dark green/blue liquid in there or evidence that it used to
be there, as well as fill lines marked on the reservoir. An empty or low
reservoir will trigger the audible alarm without any obvious signs of
malfunction. If the reservoir is low or empty it needs to be topped of and
then monitored to see if the level holds. If it doesn't, you likely have a
leak in the outdrive that needs to be addressed right away. Lube leaking
out of an outdrive will likely mean water leaking in, and that ain't good.