Sunday 26 April 2020

The blocked gear lube hole

Well I'm no nearer to solving this. The Tohatsu dealer I contacted haven't come back to me. I have poked the blockage - it is metallic that's for sure. So, like I said in a couple of posts ago - it  looks like going with option three - drain the engine oil, empty the petrol tank, lie the engine on its 'none lay down' side and then tip up the shaft to sufficient an angle that I can dribble gear lube into the lower hole using a 20 ml syringe. irritating, but it should work - if I can do it in a way so that air bubbles rise up and disperse.  Then as Joel Bergen suggested in the comments on a previous post - don't go anywhere near it again for about five years!

Ho Hum!

Postscript

Spent the morning in the garage doing the above. I managed to get around 80 ml into the gear chamber. The manual says around 180 ml.  I think that not all of the oil is draining out - I think because I can't release the vacuum through removing the top screw - there is residual oil left inside. Short of leaving it drain for several hours (because it literally just trickles out and then almost stops), I can't see what else I can do.

I had the outboard literally upside down, vertical, resting on a cushion. I syringed in 80 ml and then that chamber seemed full. I gently poked a WD-40 pipe in there to stir the oil and release air bubbles several times but that was all the oil I could get in. 

So its definitely half full, that's for sure. I'm going to assume there is more oil in there and that the whole chamber must now be near 3/4's full. Assumptions, are of course, dangerous things but I literally cannot get any more oil into that chamber. The only other options are to drill through the upper screw hole blockage and hope nothing drops into the gears; remove the lower unit once more, take off the pump housing and access the gear chamber that way; or take off the prop and the prop shaft seal and fill the chamber that way - neither of these are prospects I am particularly enamoured with. 

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Steve