Replacing intermediate bearings on a 2003 SX230

[Fspeier]

Hello,

Getting my new boat that I bought in slightly rough shape ready for the summer. The sound both jet drives make at idle out of the water is not pretty, so I took the impellers off and am servicing them, but the bearings are not too bad so I am pretty sure at this point that the noise comes from the intermediate bearings. The long hoses that grease those did not have any grease in them. I re-greased them, but may have blown out one of their seals. I left the zip ties off so as to have reduced chance of building a ton of pressure, but it immediately pressed grease towards the engine compartment so the inner seal on the bearing cannot be in good shape at this point. In short, I would rather just replace these bearings and the $110 a piece is in my budget here.
Question - can they be removed without removing engines or moving the engines? I would rather like to avoid loosening the engine so as to not have to realign the two.

Thank you
Florian

 

[dgfreeze]

There are threads on the forum discussing what all needs done to replace them (I haven't had to yet), but it seems like loosening the engines and sliding them forward a little is part of the procedure. If the noise you hear is a rattling noise, that's normal. The steering buckets make it sound like something is loose and falling apart back there. You might try to drop it into water and see how she runs before diving into a job like that based on how it sounds on the hose. Once they're in water, the steering buckets are submerged, and there's a small load on the engine, they sound completely different.

 

[robertr]

Florian, I have a 2003 230 also and when i first bought it last year I also thought the rattling noise at idle was something wrong, but after taking out both impeller shafts , the impeller housing bearings where fine, I was going to replace the intermediate bearing assy's but after advice from a couple here, I came to the conclusion that the rattle is the normal rattle when the engines are out of the water, it does sound like its going to fall apart, lol, I greased the bearing as best i could and put everything back and its been working fine since last summer, still rattles when out of the water but its normal for these boats, . and yes you need to loosen the engine mounts and slide the engines back to be able to get the intermediate bearing housings off, it is an old boat and if you want to have piece of mind and you can do it yourself, and its in the budget, then just do it now and you are set for awhile, I plan to do it when i get a chance

 

[Cobra Jet Steering LLC]

Rattling is usually the edges of the impeller touching high spots on the liner caused by dissimilar metal corrosion . Do some research before adding grease to those bearings if you want to be sure the bearings and rubber parts are in good shape not leaking , just add some gear lube to the housing using a dental style syringe at the fitting that the hose is attached to and if the rubber is bad it will leak if it not bad you just leave that gear oil in the case and it will last for a very long time use the search function before you do things as most of us have posted in the past and the info is just sitting there waiting for you to discover it. on the liner if you see any dark spots those are high spots in the liner hitting the impeller.