I destroyed my gears in the lower unit today. How much for a new lower unit for a 32hp PD?

what happened?

call prodrive monday morning.
How did it happen?

How old is your motor? They may warranty it as not many tear up the gears and they probably would wanna see what happened. They will take care of you whatever the case is.

My motor is 4 years old, I changed the oil faithfully. I was running for 1.5hours in a deep water canal when I heard a pop. I never hit anything, but I lifted the motor out of the water anyway and the lower unit sounded horrific. I figured it was a bearing, but with an approaching t-storm and a 5 year old in the boat I decided to see if it would make it to the launch. It made it! When i got home I pulled it down, the bearing swere fine, it appears a tooth broke off one of the gears. Gear teeth typically do not break unless a a piece of bearing cage go through them, but i found no evidence of this.

it's not what u ran in today, it's what u been running in for the last 4 yrs.

at least it drove back to the landing, u wern't stuck wif a smoked belt.

i've broke a tooth off before, usually once it grinds it up all the way the noise goes away.

it will take longer to take the lower unit off the engine than it will to swapout the gears.

good luck

It ain't no sway


It's the truff,,,,,,,,,I have trashed gears in a PD lower, and so has a buddy of mine, twice, but we used the sheet out of them beaches.


But in all three occasions it didn't leave us stranded.

It is 575 for the lower unit plus 1 hour labor (55$) just put a new one on my 32 two weeks ago.

it's really not hard to replace a lower unit... less than an hour for sure!

Toasted a LU this morning myself. Fortunately I was only 10 yards from the launch when I did it. Engaged the clutch, went about 10ft and sounded like I hit a stump or something - killed the motor. Refired the motor, engaged the clutch and it was 'shake, ratter, and roll' - lots of noise and vibration.

Got back to the launch, loaded, got home and torn it down. I can turn the LU input shaft roughly 3/4 turn in either direction and then it locks up. Gotta be a chunk of gear tooth broke off and floating in the housing. When I drained the LU, I could see bits of metal in the fluid coming out.

Called KP, new LU/gear box on the way. The older units like I have ('04) had issues with QC and KP is trying to get them phased out of use. Complete rebuild on the LU would have been about $400. New unit is $575, complete, bolt on, less prop.

KP and Peck did me right, from day one always had lots of vibration in my lower unit but I thought they all did this, never owned or drove a prodrive before, so i pulled it off when I was changing the spline shaft that wore out and I brought it to them to look at they tore it down found that I had two broken teeth and replaced the hole lower unit for free, I had 145 hours on my motor and now its like night and day. Not knowing when the teeth broke I think when I had first got it and didn't know what to expect so I thought this was norm. I find amazing that it ran probably well over 100 hours maybe 145 like this and never left me and didn't contamanate the oil with shavings. Alll I can say is that I am impressed.

"Only" 135 hrs on mind when it went.

Got some info from KP with regards to prepping for the new LU. He passed along a drawing tht says to drill a 3/4" hole approx 3 3/4" up from where the LU meets the LU housing. The suggestion is to tap the hole and put a pipe plug in it. THe reason for the hole is access to a grease zerk in the new LU.

My question to those that have replaced the LU, did the new LU come with a new 'sleeve' or the inner cylinder that the 4 long bolts run thru and if so was the sleeve also bored with a 3/4" hole. If not and you bored the LU as suggested, did you also bore the sleeve?

The grease fitting is lower than the spacer. Doesn't have anything to do with it with tapping the hole.

New LU came today and installed it tonight !

Back on the water this weekend !!!!