Saildrive Gear?

[TabbyCat]

https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ture32031.html
"On investigating the leak in the sail drives the engineers found there was more water than oil in the drive, and the case hardening has started to fail on the lower unit gear sets as shown in the photo’s."

Can anyone provide any insight into this? The attached photo doesn't mean anything to me.

[Chotu]

I don’t see a picture, but from the wording, you are going to need some new parts. Internal parts. The case hardening could be on the stuff that holds the gears in there, or it could be on the gear end it’s self. Not able to tell without pictures or more of a description. Either way, you’re going to need those new parts if that is happening.

Basically case hardening is a type of hardening on metal that is on the outer layer of it. If you overheat metal from say, not having any lubricant in the gearbox, that can change the hardening of the metal. Make it weaker, brittle, it can do all sorts of things. So it sounds like it overheated and needs to be replaced.

[SVHarmonie]

Looking at the photo, the gear in question has significant rust on the surface. This would indicate that any case hardening that was designed into the gear is compromised. I don't see any color changes on the metal that would indicate overheating.

This is not surprising if there was "more water than oil" in the unit.

Jeez, I hate sail drives.