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Siezed Steering on Mercury 50 1980bs

J

juzzer

New member
I have a Merc 50 (Blueban

I have a Merc 50 (Blueband) which I think is from the early 1980's. The steering has siezed and is almost impossible to move. I have tried pumping as much grease as will go in and I have also tried using a blow lamp but nothing has worked. I have been told that I may need to strip the steering column down and clean it up and replace the seals etc. but I don't know where to start taking bits off (someone said I may need to remove the power head??). I would be gratefull of any advice.

Thanks
 
Juzzer... you are on the righ

Juzzer... you are on the right track. Usually when these motors sieze up like this they can be heated have fresh grease pumped throught them and get a couple more seasons out of. The proper way to do it is to remove the powerhead first then remove the exhaust housing (I also remove the gearbox) Then you need to remove the swivel pin.Clean it thoroughly replace seals(should be 2 on yours 1 top 1 bottom) grease and then put back together. Good luck with it.
 
" Thanks, Any tips on how to t

" Thanks, Any tips on how to take the power head off? I am not too sure which bits I need to remove to get to other bits.....
I have had the gearbox off before but nothing in the engine itself other than the control cables.. "
 
" Juzzer...There are a few dif

" Juzzer...There are a few different methods of powerhead removal. This is the one that I use for a job like yours. I would recommend you buy yourself a workshop manual before attempting the job. If you feel confident without it then you should be ok. First remove the engine cover then disconect control cables and all wiring that goes to the controls. Next remove the lower wrap cover to expose the nuts that secure the powerhead. Remove all these nuts. You can then remove the whole powerhead along with lower pan, adapter plate and shift rod as an assembly. The down side to this method is that you have to lift the powerhead up about 3ft to clear the shift shaft and water tube. The up side is that you dont need to pull apart half of the powerhead, you keep all the electrics and everything else as an assembly. with this method you will need to remove the gearbox before you put the powerhead back on but this doesn t take long to do. "
 
I had the same problem with m

I had the same problem with my 1973 85HP Merc a couple years ago. After much fighting trying to get the grease to go up in the column we finally applied heat from below with the motor tilted as far up as posible but that didn't help. We blew out the grease and put penetrating oil in the housing. Here's the scarry part we hooked up an airline to the grease fitting and heated the housing from below.

Being an old motor the lower end leaked so we had to wrap string to seal the lower end which I left in place after we got the unit to free up.

This is a shade tree fix but it was a lot easier than tearing down the motor. Leaving the string seal in the bottom gave me a couple more years of service out of the motor which siezed up in the power head last year sad to say.
 
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