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Bell HousingtoGimbal Ring Hinge Pins

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bonden

Member
"I'm fixing up a 1975 25&#

"I'm fixing up a 1975 25' Sport Craft Sport Fisherman with no engine and a pre-Alpha(?) transom plate assy that once connected to a 351 Windsor. Its been sitting in my yard for more than a year - here's the old thread where I asked what parts might work (to be clear - the engine was stolen from the guy I bought it from, not me): http://www.marineengine.com/discus/messages/12486/149026.shtml

So, now I have a late 80s 5.7 Mercruiser drop-in engine I got on Ebay from OH (fresh water). It seems pretty nice and has good compression.

I have a scrap 1990ish(?) Maxum 21 bowrider for parts (transom plate, bell housing, power steering and related parts).

The current phase of my project is taking the transom plate off the Maxum and that's where I'm having an issue. The Bell Housing-to-Gimbal ring hinge pins had sensors on them, apparently a limit switch to port and a trim angle indicator to starboard, and these sensor & switch units have 12-sided male items that fit into 12-sided holes in what may be the heads of the hinge pins???

My Sealoc manual mentions only a special tool and shows no pix of anything like this.

Here's an album - 7 pics of the Maxum 21 transom plate in question:
http://community.webshots.com/album/574138003fXKcPZ?vhost=community

ETA: It seems Webshots is too busy to show my pics, but not to show ads. Here's the same shots on Photobucket:
http://s631.photobucket.com/albums/uu40/ncsailrman/MAXUM 21 transom/

If anyone could explain how to get these hinge pins out, I'd greatly appreciate it. If it’s a simple matter of (12-sided) socket-head cap screws, great!

- Is there a way around buying the special tool? A large Allen wrench? A particular size grade 8 bolt head that might fit? Size?

- This is my first Mercruiser project. Any comments, observations, tips or advice on the overall project would be most welcome."
 
"If you buy this tool when you

"If you buy this tool when you go to use it be very very sure it is seated ALL the way in before attempting to loosen the screws,

Also when reinstalling grease the threads and then tighten. will make dissassembly much easier the next time!!"
 
"Thank you both for the advice

"Thank you both for the advice! Got them off without any trouble.

Here's some pics of what I did:
http://rides.webshots.com/album/574179669dbskrl?vhost=rides

After realizing, from advice here, the hinge pins are just fancy socket head bolts, and being as cheap as I am impatient, I figured I'd try this piece from the hardware store. If it didn’t work I'd order the tool from ebay and wait until next weekend.

Its maybe called a threaded joiner, or similar, and is 1/2" across the flats. Its maybe used to connect 5/16" pieces of threaded rod together, and costs 57 cents. I also bought a 5/16" carriage bolt for another 27 cents, since they are threaded all the way up, to fill the hole in the joiner so it wouldn’t collapse if lots of torque was needed. I nipped the head of the carriage bolt off with bolt cutters.

It worked well.

Now, I was just following the instructions in the manual, but I'm guessing that I really didn’t need to remove the bell housing to get the gimbal housing and inner transom plate off the hull, did I? Oh well, its good to know how it all works and that it will be cleaned up, lubed and reassembled correctly.

The pin holding the power steering shaft to the steering arm was swollen with rust. Had to cut the pin in two places with a hacksaw to get that apart."
 
"Hello Moderator,

Have modi

"Hello Moderator,

Have modified my albums at Webshots and wished to post this corrected link to the original message in this thread, but am unable to edit (60-minute edit limit expired):

http://community.webshots.com/album/574175509ZwMjbP?vhost=community

Would like to post that link about midway down the message where it now says:

Here's an album - 7 pics of the Maxum 21 transom plate in question:
http://community.webshots.com/album/574138003fXKcPZ?vhost=community

Please advise if this is incorrect protocol for such a request."
 
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