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Johnson Evinrude Prop Shaft Installation

In this video I install the forward bearing, pinion gear, forward and reverse gears, dog clutch with shifter cradle and pivot pin, and finally the propeller shaft with detent balls and spring.

Johnson Evinrude Prop Shaft Installation – Video Transcript

Hey there, Dangar Stu here. Today's video is about installing the prop shaft into a Johnson 30 horsepower outboard and is proudly sponsored by MarineEngine.com.

As well as the prop shaft, we'll be putting the dog clutch in the gear selector mechanism, all that kind of stuff, so by the end of this video we should have this gear box pretty much up and running.,(To do this job we're going to be using Sail and Anchor this time, to add a bit of a nautical theme.)

Okay, we got up to step 35 which is coat the forward bearing in oil, so we've got it sitting in some oil here. First step is to install that bearing but I'll leave that until we get it more organized with everything else, otherwise it will just fall out again. Step after that is to install the washers and bearing for our pinion and there's a very specific orientation they go in, so I'll show you that. If you have a look here this part, P, this top one, has a chamfered side and that goes facing upwards this way, then you've got your bearing in the middle and the bottom washer has more square edges. It might be a little bit hard to see on camera but the top edge here is the chamfered edge of this washer so this is the outside one.

Then we have our bearing, then we have our square edge washer, so this is the order they go in. So, I'm actually going to give those a bit of a clean to get the old oil off and then we'll soak them in some fresh oil. So, the first thing we're gonna be putting in, is the forward bearing for the prop shaft, the forward gear, and the pinion. So, I'm actually gonna soak all those parts. You can tell the two gears apart by the diameter inside here. The forward gear's got a smaller diameter, the reverse gear's got the larger diameter. So I'm also going to soak that forward gear just get oil on it and then we'll start dropping everything in. So, start with that forward taper roller bearing; then, we're just dropping that into the race we installed last week.

That's the forward bearing sitting down there in the race now. Now, we'll put this pinion together in the order we were just talking about, so, square washer on the bottom, bearing in the middle, and then our chamfered washer with the chamfered side pointing up. This pinion gear then goes in the gear box and sits this way. It's a little bit harder to line up now that we've got those pinion bearings in. There we go. So, this is what we have now. Now we're gonna take the forward gear, slide it in under the pinion and put it up against the front of the gear box. So we've dropped that forward gear in, gone past the pinion and had it so that the teeth are meshed with the pinion, so I'll show you that. That's what that looks like now.

So next step is to install the shift cradle on the dog clutch. This is our shift cradle, this is our dog clutch. What we need to have is this side, hopefully you can see, a bit dark, but there's a groove in this section, and it's smooth on this section. The section with the groove goes towards the forward gear towards the front of the gear box. When you're putting the shift cradle and the dog clutch together, the manual says to use a little bit of needle bearing assembly grease just to hold them together. The idea with this grease is that it sort of holds things together but it will gradually just mix up with the gearbox oil and dissipate. People have said to me for this they just use Vaseline and I must admit it does look very similar. Alright so, I think the idea there is the assembly grease is just going to hold this and stop it from falling apart. Next thing we need to do is get this in the gear case and then get the pivot pin through the gear case into here, which is what the cradle pivots on. We need to put an O-ring on here to stop the gearbox oil coming out, and I actually don't think there is one in this Sierra lower unit seal kit, so I'm just going to go look through my own kit and see if I can find one that's about the right size. These are all nitrile O-rings so they're oil proof, which is what you need, and yeah, I think that's gonna be fine. I think that'll do the job to stop it leaking oil. It also calls for a little bit of grease on the o-ring so, we'll do that.

Then what I could do is just clean this thread up a little bit, get the grease off it, because we also need to put a little bit of thread Locker on the thread here so this doesn't come out. All right now I put a little dab of thread Locker on, they say to use some long nose pliers to put this in, but I'm just gonna do it by hand 'cuz my fingers fit. Now, if you're using pliers and you're finding it hard to get positions, what we're looking to do-take this out again- is we need to get this hole here lined up with the hole the pin goes through. So what I'll often do- get it in like this and then you can use a bit of a pic or something to bring it into line. There we go, and drop the pivot pin in. I want to make this tight enough so that it doesn't fall out, but I don't want to crush the O-ring in there, and I can just let the thread Locker do the job of stopping it coming back out again.

This is where we're at. Got the pinion gear at the top, bearing in front of that forward gear, forward gear in, then the dog clutch and the shift' cradle in and the pivot pin holding that in. All right, now we're up to the prop shaft, so we're going to need another special tool, which I think is a very make-able tool. So this is a tool that slides over the prop shaft and helps hold the spring and the ball bearings in place whilst you get it onto the dog clutch and push it in. I probably should remember to show you this while the dog clutch was out, maybe I should do that, don't be lazy, all right- I'll take that out again so I can show you how this tool works then we'll put the dog clutch back in.

There are two ends to this tool but the end we need is the one that mates with our dog clutch. So this clutch has got three dogs on it, and this tool slots in like this. Now I'm gonna grab the spring and the ball bearings that came from it. What we're doing now is we're sliding the tool over the prop shaft so that the hole in the prop shaft here, there's a little hole here, there's one on each side, so those holes line up with the hole in the tool. As you can see there, so you can rotate it and we want those to line up too. The holes just on one side. What you can also see through this slot here is there's a little depression on the far side of the tool. So we've got the ball bearing on the other side of the prop shaft to drop into there and lock in. So, prop shaft in, one ball bearing in the bottom, spring in the middle, one ball bearing on the top. You can see that ball bearing sitting on there. Then I'm gonna hold it down and the tool here is sort of tapered backwards, so as I pull this tool down we've got the bottom ball bearing sitting in that little detent hole and the other one just up in here, so they can't go anywhere and spring apart. So that's how we want this positioned when we install the prop shaft. As the prop shaft gets slid in through the dog clutch.

We need those little detent balls to sit in, I cannot block the light, sit in that little groove in the middle of the dog clutch. When we go to do the final installation, the prop shaft will be pushing the tool and the prop shaft in, the whole thing. We'll have the dog clutch reinstalled and we'll slide it in, so that the splines mate up on the dog clutch and the prop shaft, and will go in like that. Then. as we keep pushing the prop shaft forward, those detent balls will go in under the dog clutch and into those grooves rather than just popping out here. And then we can take the tool out It took a little bit of force, but, this is what we now have. As we push the prop shaft in, it came out from under the tool and into the clutch here and inside here we can see the dog clutch is now locked on by their spring in those detent balls. that's what the tool helps you do. I've got to be careful now, if I just pull this dog clutch off the spring we'll send those ball bearings flying so we gonna make sure we don't lose them.

So I'm just gonna take this off inside the Rag, to keep them contained. Once again, it takes a bit of force, it took a bit of force to push the prop shaft into the dog clutch and it's going to take a little bit of force to pull it back out, because of those detent balls and the spring. All right, so the spring still in there. So there's our two ball bearings and our spring. So that's exactly what we're gonna do only inside the gear box. So, let's put this with a little bit more assembly grease, put the dog clutch and the pivot pin back in. While I've been working with this, that forward gear has shifted a little bit. I'm gonna reposition it because you need the dog clutch, the forward gear and the forward bearing, all to be in a line if you're going to slide the prop shaft in. Now, we're going to put the prop shaft back in the tool and put the springs and the ball bearing back in.

This time round since it's our final install, I'm just going to dip a little gearbox oil on the spring and the ball bearings. The service manual says you should wear safety glasses when you're doing this part because obviously the ball bearings are held in by the spring and they can pop out and go in your eye. Now I've wiped my glasses with my shirt I can't say anything so, let's kind of skip that bit. The only thing we need to think about as we first slot this in, is getting the splines on the prop shaft and the dog clutch to mate in a way that allows the notches on the end of this tool to match the dogs on the clutch. I'll give you a look inside now, the tools in position, so hopefully you see what's going on. What you need is the tool, the red-colored tool, to be pressed hard against the dog clutch as you push the prop shaft into the gearbox.

If there's a gap between the tool and the dog clutch, that's where the ball bearings can pop out, so you got to make sure that that red tool stays pressed hard against the dog clutch the whole time you're pushing the prop shaft even further in. All right, what I've got now is the gearbox on the bench hard up against his toolbox so it can't slide forward. What I'm gonna do is use one hand to hold the tool against the dog clutch, so that a little gap doesn't open up, that gap opening up is what allows the ball bearings to escape. What I'm gonna do after that, is use the rubber mallet to tap the prop shaft forward until the end of the prop shaft is in the bearing and those little ball bearings have slotted into that groove inside the dog clutch. Okay, that felt like it locked in there so, I had better slide the tool off without our ball bearings flying everywhere. So, this is what we've got now, prop shaft in the dog clutch, dog clutch in the shift cradle, the end of the prop shaft into that bearing at the back, through the forward gear into the bearing, and the spring and two ball bearings locked into the groove inside the dog clutch.

Now we're going to put the reverse gear into the gear box. Inside the reverse gear here is a bushing. So, I'm going to take that out and just pop it in the oil. That helps when installing it too, because it means that the gear can sort of move around a little bit on the prop shaft because we need to get it past that shift cradle. All I did then, a little bit hard to show You, sorry, was get in with this pic, where the gear was hung up on the shift cradle a little bit, and sort of lever it over so it dropped in. So I'll show you what looks like now. There at the bottom of the gear box near the skeg, you can see that little cradle linkage that I had to get the gear over before I can get it all the way against the pinion. Next thing I do is put the bushing back inside the reverse gear.

To do that, I'm just gonna take it out of the oil, slide it down the prop shaft, gonna need two hands now but I'm just gonna have to line the reverse gear with it and then push it down inside. Alright done. Now what we need to do is take this shifter yoke, that looks like this. We have to get it in, hook it under that pin, that goes through the shift cradle, the cradle that holds the dog clutch. Then, once it's in position, we bring this shift linkage down through the top of the gear box and thread it into here. What I'm gonna do before I do that though, is install a new seal and seal housing into the top of the gearbox, maybe should have done that before I started putting this together, but never mind. This is the seal that stops water getting in and oil getting out through the shift linkage here.

This little housing has an O-ring around the outside here to seal it against the gearcase itself. Then it has another O-ring that goes on the inside, a little bit hard to squish in, but then we install an O-ring on the inside here so we end up with one O-ring around the outside here, to seal the little housing to the case and another one on the inside, to seal against the shift linkage. Then on the very bottom is this little nylon washer. I'm gonna put a little bit of grease on the outside O-ring and then we'll put a little bit on the shift linkage before we push it through the inner O-ring. This needs to be pressed in, very similar to the bearings we did last week, so I'll just take it over to the press and push the housing in. That's the housing, pressed in now, so we're ready to put the gear shift linkage through it.

Alright, so this manual also calls for a little bit of grease on the threads at the end, so I'll do that. We're getting close now. What we need to do is get this inside the gearbox now, over the prop shaft like this, then down at the bottom on that shifter yoke, there's a little clevis pin. We need to hook around that pin then we're going to push the shift rod down and thread it into here. All right, for this bit I'm gonna go put the gearbox over in the lower unit stand. (Yes I know nothing brings a bit of class of the workshop like a pink 76 ltd).

Alright what I'm gonna do is we're gonna put this in, it's actually a little bit hard in this gearbox now I think about it. Ah, it's not too bad actually we can reach, but what we need to do is. I'll pull it out first, we're gonna swap this down and then we're going to need to reach in and align the female thread here so we can start winding this in. So we got to push it down, it takes a little bit of force, because it's got to go through that new O-ring. Hopefully you can see in there now, we've got the tip of the thread from the shift linkage pointing down and then the female section of the shifter there is tilted towards us. So we need to push that forward and line them up. Now the threads are into the shifter, I can just start tightening it up. If we take the coupling off the top, there's a slot in the top of that shift linkage, so I can put a screw driver down and tighten it into the shifter inside the gearbox.

Alright we'll leave this gearbox here that's pretty much all the internals back in now. We've got a forward gear, reverse gear, pinion, and all the gear selection mechanism in, and our prop shaft. Next video I'm going to focus on all the seals. So, we'll put the seals in the bearing carrier put the bearing carrier back in and we'll put the drive shaft seals in. After that we're looking at water pump, and then essentially, it's ready to go back on the outboard. All right, well thanks for watching. Take care, I'll catch you soon. See ya.