ALPHA 1 gimble teardown

[THEFERMANATOR]

I'm redoing my ALPHA 1 gimble in my SEARAY project, so I brought the camera with me today to take some pics and maybe help others in the future.

Here's a shot of the outdrive with the trim pin removed from the outdrive. The arrows show the 6 nuts that hold the out drive on. Make sure that you have it in forward before trying to remove the outdrive(don't ask).

This is with the outdrive removed. The red shows the screws that hold the sender and limit switch on, and the green is where the hinge pins are(the MERCRUISER tool worked great for removing these).

You may encounter the same problem I did, one of the trim limit screws was froze in. Rather than break the screw off, you can take a screwdriver and bust the outer ring of the limit switch out and then slide the switch out. Then you can use some heat and penetrant to take the screw out when there is enough of it sticking out to grip onto.

These are the hinge pins and plastic washers that go in between the gimble and helmet.

Here's the helmet laying loose, you'll need a long 1/4" drive extension and a 5/16" swivel socket to loosen the hose clamps that hold the bellows onto the gimble before the helmet will come out.

Here's the inside of the gimble with the helmet out. You can vagely make out where the last person used excessive force in installing the gimble bearing(dings all around the edge of the bearing).

So an hour later this is what I resorted to in removing the bearing. I took a drill and drilled holes through each side of the bearing to split it(red circles), and then used a slide hammer to remove it.

What was left of the gimble bearing.

Here's the helmet on the bench.


And my top notch trim rams.

To be continued...............