That’s exactly what mine look like when a break occurs, Labrador-Guy. Snaps right at the top as in your photo. I think I’ll place 4 tacks on them from now on and just use brass for a drive (shear) pin.
Mumbles make an excellent point when welding a broken shock. Alignment is critical.
This shock set up seems like over engineering to me… Isn’t this what the shear pin is supposed to take care of? Just seems like they could have saved plenty of money and customer repairs if a regular strength shear pin was used and the shock feature deleted. Were the engineers trying to have the shock take care of hitting minor/soft obstructions without actually shearing the pin? Nice thought, but impractical.
the first outboard i worked on when i was 14 had the spring break. my uncle helped me get it running .after all that work the spring in the shock absorber broke. my dad took me to the dealer to get a new one. i thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head when they told him $150.
My understanding is that this shock absorber design came before that rubber hub props, with basically the same objective of avoiding the need to replace a shear pin. I’ve not seen broken springs but have seen the assembly grow in length and put a lot of pressure on the water pump. Somewhere I’ve seen a torque spec for testing the spring clutch function.
If they have expanded, I press them back together and weld them up every time. Change to a brass shear pin and move on. The design was a good thought, but the whole thing is a compromise in my opinion. The removable bushing plate under the water pump and using the water pump screws to hold the sealing surface together with a gasket mashed in between just seems like an inferior design to me.
Agreed, use the softer shear pins and buy a few of them. Over engineered, features with no real benefits. And yes, that upper bushing plate is a pain, can’t figure out that useless gasket for the life of me.
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