• Home
• Videos
• Dangar Marine
• Johnson Evinrude Bearing Carrier Installation

Johnson Evinrude Bearing Carrier Installation

In this video I install the oil seals and bearing carrier into the Johnson 30 HP outboard gearbox.

Johnson Evinrude Bearing Carrier Installation – Video Transcript

Hey there, Dangar Stu here. Today's video is about reinstalling the bearing carrier with new oil seals into the Johnson 30 horsepower outboard and is proudly sponsored by Marine Engine com.

All right we'll head over to the bench and we'll start by putting the oil seals in. There are two oil seals that go in the aft end of the bearing carrier, they're going back to back and they seal around the prop shaft. They're probably the most common seal to fail in an outboard lower unit because they're exposed to the elements, the water and most commonly fishing line getting wrapped around the prop and cutting the seals so we're gonna push those in first. These are the two oil seals we're going to be putting in, and they have a spring side and then a flat metal side and they go in with the two flat metal sides pointing towards each other so spring facing into the gearbox and out to the water. As always there's a custom tool for installing these seals, which I don't have so I'm going to use a 23 millimeter socket.

This one is, doesn't scrape, it's not a tight fit inside the bearing carrier but it's as big as I can get it so I can get to the outside edge of the seal rather than crushing that inside lip, so I think this will work well. First one we're putting spring side down which will be going in towards the gearbox to seal all the gearbox oil from coming out. I'm just gonna hammer this in rather than using the press, and as always when using a hammer it's good to have some sort of safety glasses on because things can go flying. You can hear it change tone slightly when it's bedded all the way in so there's our first one in, you can see that. Now we're going to pop this second one on, on top with the springs facing up. All right, hopefully you can see there with the torch but, got the two seals back-to-back on the aft end of the bearing carrier.

So you can see they're not damaged at all so although it's not the right tool for the job if you can really get the right size socket it generally does a pretty good job. Next thing to do is replace the o-ring around the whole bearing carrier. When you install the bearing carrier, water and exhaust flows are in this section that's not sealed at all but these seals stop water coming in through here, and it's this o-ring that stops water coming in and oil coming out through the gearcase housing. So we'll get this old one off first obviously. Now I'm just going to take this over to the wire wheel and just clean up both these surfaces here. Alright just a little clean up, nothing too severe.

Now I'm just going to pop the new o-ring on, that o-ring came as a part of a full lower unit gearcase sealing kit and you can see it sits a little bit more proud than the other one did, it was quite compressed the other one. I can't see a part of the manual here that actually specifies, but I'm just gonna put a little bit of marine grease around this inner flange and on the o-ring itself. Now I'm going to install the reverse gear thrust washer, which sits in the forward side of the bearing carrier here, so it goes in like that. The service manual says to install it with the needle bearing assembly brace, which once again I presume is really just a bit holding in place, until it's all put together. This particular washer doesn't seem chamfered in any way so I don't think it matters which way around it goes. When we start putting it all back together, first thing we need to do is put this retaining plate into the gearbox, it goes in behind the reverse gear and where we had the pivot point for the gear selector mechanism this little tab here has to drop down, so this bit goes down, we get it along the prop shaft, drop it in and then this circlip is what's going to hold this in, then the bearing carrier threads into the holes on this plate.

So retaining plate first, I'm going to slide it in at this angle so I can get the tab on the bottom here in and then stand it up. If I push it right back like this, there's a groove just in front of it and this is the groove I now need to get that circlip into. The circlip itself has one slightly rounded edge and then on the other side it's got a sharper edge and the sharper edge faces aft because these can go flying, glasses are recommended. So your advantage of getting old, you need them anyway. I'm going to use the circlip pliers to compress it a little bit and then use a screwdriver to poke it into the groove all the way around to make sure it's properly seated. I'd like to say that was easier than it was but it was actually quite fiddly, maybe some slightly longer handled circlip pliers would help, what I ended up doing was squeezing it, getting the base of it in, into the groove and then actually just tapping around the edge of it, just popping each little bit into the groove as I went and in the end it sort of popped in quite nicely so I know it's secure. That's what it's looking like now.

What we're going to do next is push the bearing carrier into the gearcase. When we get it in we need these two holes here to line up with the two threaded holes in that plate because we need to put bolts through this into there. What they say is there's a kind of a custom aligning tool which is essentially a rod with some thread, I'm just going to get a bolt with the right thread, cut the head off it and then we're gonna thread that in and that'll allow us to push the bearing carrier in and know that it's lined up with those holes. This is what we're left with now, just the bolt with the head cut off and then I've just sort of chamfered the end slightly to make it easy to push the bearing carrier over it, without it getting hung up.

The threads are clean on the plate so I'm not expecting to use a lot of force to wind it in so I haven't bothered, sort of grinding a flat on under anything like that. Although I think it'll go in pretty easily I actually can't quite reach in with my fingers I need this to be a bit longer if I'm gonna do that, so I'm going to use a socket just with a bit of blue tack in it. Blue tack is great for situations like this, times when you need to stick a screw on the end of a screwdriver if you can't hold it all that kind of stuff, so I'll just stick a bit down on the socket, put our rod in, then wind it in. So there you can see on the left-hand side, we've got our new little homemade guide pin wound into the plate. On the aft end of the bearing carrier, the one that points out of the gearbox you'll see there it's got a little up written so this is what goes to the top then at the back these holes here and here or what we're lying up with the retainer plate and so we're going to slide it on with the left hand guide pin coming in through here. Before we slide it on though, I'm just going to put a little bit of grease on the inner lips of the oil seals here, just so it slides over the gear shaft, there's got a little bit of start-up lubrication before the gearbox oil works its way through. Alright, so reverse thrust washer, new o-ring, bit of grease there, bit of grease in the oil seals, time to press it in. In the manual it also says to put a bit of OMC gasket sealer around this aft edge, I'm not so worried about this because it doesn't really seal a lot, it's just to secure it. What I'm going to use is the Merc perfect Seal, which I think is pretty much an Equivalent.

This is mainly going to be about preventing corrosion to pull it out again, in which case I think you could probably just put a bit of a smear of grease on it but, we'll do it as they say anyway even though it's not quite the right sealant. All right, so the little up symbol facing towards the top. Now the service manual says just use a little bit of a brass punch just to start pressing it in so, we'll tap it in until it's all the way back, then we'll put the bolt into the empty hole and then we'll wind our guide pin out. I'm pretty sure there's a filter on Final Cut Pro to make this look brass. That now feels all the way in, so we've got our greased oil seals on the shaft now, you can see down the bottom here a little bit that Perfect Seal has come round but that should stop that corroding. And if we look into the back on the left there, you can see our guide pin sticking out, which means we can put a bolt in hopefully on the right-hand side, then we'll take that pin out and put the other bolt in.

These are the two bolts that hold the bearing carrier in, and you can see under the head there they've got some o-rings, so I'm going to replace those as well. You can see this little channel in the back of the head of the bolt they go in, and they have this little sort of hexagonal inside shape to them, they're not really an o-ring you could probably use one but they've got a square profile to them. So we'll pop the new o-rings on, our new seals on. Then it says to use more of the sealing compound on the o-rings themselves and the threads of the bolts. So bit on the thread, and then just a bit around the seals. All right got the bolt on the t-bar now I'm gonna go wind it in, hopefully it'll line up because of the aligning pin on the other side.

All right, it feels like it started so obviously the aligning pin has done its job, now I'm going to use my socket with some blue tack in it to get the aligning pin out. There we go, and then we'll put the other bolt in. Now both those bolts are started I'm just gonna wind them a little bit of a time just to pull the bearing carrier all the way in. There is a torque spec for those bolts it's seven to nine Newton meters but because I was pulling the carrier a little bit I actually ended up using a bit more than that I think just to get him seated but, I'm comfortable with that.

Now what I'm going to do is put the driveshaft oil seals in, they go in the same way, back to back, like the prop shaft only they're vertical, and I'm gonna use in this case I think I figured out it was a one-inch socket was pretty good size for these, pretty close to diameter but slightly smaller than the seal so it won't score the housing at all. Once again the surface they come up against is clean but not so flogged out that there are loose fit, if they were I'd need some sort of sealant but in this case I'm just gonna put them in as is but once again just oil the inner lip so when you push the driveshaft in they don't get damaged. This is our drive shaft bearing here, so gearbox oil comes all the way up to lubricate that bearing and then the oil seals stop the oil coming any further. If you find you've got gearbox oil in your cooling water it's because these seals are failed and the water pumps actually sucking it up into the pump and circulating it through, so these the ones we'll be doing next.

First one spring side facing down. That one felt really good going in, every tap moved it a little bit so it wasn't hung up anywhere but it still felt quite snug so I'm not expecting any oil or water to leak around the outside of it. Next one popping in spring side facing up. You need to be a little bit more careful when you're putting them in spring side up because you're pressing against the edge of them, so just make sure it stays aligned. All right there we go, second one on top, spring side facing up, there's a bit of damage to this edge here from corrosion but it's well above the oil seal here so it's going to have no impact on how well it seals. Because we've been doing all these seals the obvious conclusion this video is to do a pressure test. Now I can't do that with the driveshaft out so I'm going to pop that in now but before I do that when I clean it up.

And this is what it looks like now, there's a bit of pitting in this midsection but I can't see that being a huge problem. Alright I'm just gonna put a little bit more grease where the oil seal runs here, uh and a little bit on because I'm gonna be pushing it down through those or seals. It's good to grease at the top of a driveshaft, the bottom sits in gearbox oil so it's not really that important. So now we just slide the driveshaft down, past these oil seals and then we'll just have to rotate it a little bit, because it needs to mate with the female splines in the pinion. Driveshaft down through the oil seal now, and if we rotate the driveshaft we can see our prop shaft turning.

The gearbox was actually in neutral originally, so I just lifted this gear selector up with a pair of pliers to put it into gear. The last thing we need to install before we can do our pressure test is one of the drain plugs, this kit came with new drain plugs and new seals, so I might as we'll use those. So I'm going to put the top one in and then we'll put the tester into the bottom hole. It's worth mentioning the other place the gearboxes can leak from is the gear selector seal but that was something we did in a previous video so that's already got brand new o-rings in it. All right lined our pump in, give it a few pumps. Okay that actually took 20 pumps to get it up to 10 psi, but it's holding there pretty well. Somebody asked me the other day in a comment how long it took to get up to pressure, in my memory it was sort of 5 or 10 but it actually took 20 for this gearbox, it actually doesn't have to hold it that long to pass, so you can already consider this well sealed.

If it was leaking you could just submerse the whole thing in water, see where the bubbles come from. The next video for this outboard will be putting the new water pump on, I'm going to splice small footage of removing the gearbox to the start of that video because if you want to do the water pump you're gonna want to know how to take the gearbox off so apologies for a little bit of repetition there but I think it'll make the video standalone if you're searching to do that job.