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Metal shavings in bilge?
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Topic author - Posts: 4
- Joined: Fri Aug 13, 2021 10:29 pm
- Vessel Info: 2000 200SS, 5.0 Carb, Alpha 1.
Metal shavings in bilge?
Does anyone have any ideas on this?
Boat runs strong, no metal in oil, changed every season.
2000 200SS
Merc 5.0L Alpha1 Gen 2
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- Posts: 20
- Joined: Wed Jul 31, 2024 11:53 pm
- Vessel Info: 1979 SunCruiser 255, 1998 MerCruiser 5.7L L31
- Been thanked: 3 times
Re: Metal shavings in bilge?
Metal debris that appear on a magnet are either iron, or steel. Iron is typically 'powder', and steel is usually 'shavings'. Since you say 'shavings', I'll assume they're steel-ish.
I'm going to assume that the tablespoon of 'fine shavings' is fine enough that they're NOT from some fastener that's chewed out a bracket or something.
Since this is a 5.0L Alpha drive, my first GUESS would be from spline wear... the U-joint passes through gimbal bellows, gimbal ring, into the hull, then into the flywheel coupler.
Those splines NEED to be properly aligned, and properly greased. They WILL wear, and when they wear, there will be loose ferrous metal.
When draining the block, there's a certain amount of iron debris that comes out with the flushing, and a little bit of iron or steel that, as part of manufacturing, wound up inside the cooling passages, and came out with the winterizing drain-water.
There's instances where, in the process of manufacture, brackets got drilled, or reamed out ('Waller'd') to promote easier alignment of stuff that didn't quite align... typically that won't be 'fine'.
If the alternator bolt... or a water pump housing bolt... or a power steering bracket bolt happened to be loose at some point in time, and back out enough to contact the flange of one of those rascals, it will have abraded off some steel.
If your boat has a push-pull steering cable (most will), and power steering (many do) then the motion of that cable during operation could have scuffed some steel from some place of contact. Furthermore, the tiller arm (connected to the gimbal ring through the top gimbal pin) often works loose and wears off a little metal, but like the drive coupler splines, should have had copiuous volumes of icky-gooey grease to retain the precious metals in adhesive suspension up top.
IF the shavings were 'generated' as a result of some OTHER work elsewhere in the boat, and MIGRATED to that point of the bilge, well, then it could'a been anything... or just stray debris from some other circumstance.
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