Hey guys. Wind was blowing so hard today. Had to trim my motor up and use it to get off a windblown bank. In the process I believe i might have fried my impeller. Noticed that i had hardly any h2o pressure, took it to the ramp and brought her home. So has anyone here replaced their impeller their self? I'm of above average mechanical ability, and the marine shop here has a month and a half back log..... and the h2o temp was 61 degrees..... caught a few small sows full of eggs, and several small bucks. nothing over two pounds... sure hate to miss the rest of it due to boat problems.... this is a 30 y/o motor, Johnson 115 horse sea drive. I've had it the past two years, so I know it has that much time on it. No telling when the last time it was changed... I do have the shop manual for my motor. Is this do-able? :-?

and yes i know, I should have already done it. >

on my 1972 55HP Chrysler outboard it was pretty easy, the only hard thing is when I unscrewed the unit, it dropped a little for you to pull a pin for the gear shaft.  So the very small opening of attaching and unattaching it.  After you unhook that, not sure on your model how it is setup, the whole lower unit will slide down with the drive shaft.  The water impeller will be right on top of the lower unit.  Just pull it off or slide it off, depends if it is shredded.  Then just slide the new impeller on and silde the lower unit back up in place and attach the gear shaft.

Really not that hard, like changing your oil.  Once you do it once it is a breeze and not that hard.

Late last summer I bought a nice 16 foot fiberglass bass boat with an 85 horse Chrysler on it. They guy was showing me how well it ran when I pointed out it wasn't pumping any water. He shut it down and said he didn't have time to fix it and thought it was a big problem. He gave it to me for a $1000.00 because of the bad impeller. 17 bucks and a half hour of labor and it has run perfectly since.

Just tear into it and I am betting you'll find it is much easier than you might think. Mine was. It was intimidating at first glance but it turned out to be very easy with regular hand tools.

Good luck with it.

Well, went to lufkin, got the impeller kit. Came home, dropped the lower unit, 6 bolts. the hard part was getting the shift linkage disconnected. No problem, till I get the unit on the saw horses, and pull the new impeller unit out of the box. I got home with the wrong one..... and of course, i didn't find this out til saturday, and the marine shop is closed til monday..... And it was beautiful here Sunday, and i'm stuck at home with no lower unit :'(..... anywhoo, got the right one monday, had to work and no chance to get to the impeller til tomorrow, It's been really simple so far. I hope i didn't just shoot myself in the foot. :-?..... I'll let ya'll know if it goes ok....I'll let ya'll know if it doesn't! labor at the shop i got the part at was flat rate two hours, at $70 an hour..... that's a bunch of worms.....

Nine bolts and the shift linkage were all I had to remove.  It was well worth doing at home.  Reconnecting the shift linkage was the hardest part, had to have my wife turn the bolt while I held everything in alignment.   Took all of 55 minutes once I had the proper parts in hand.  The old impeller was in good shape, it now resides under a seat just in case.  Thanks for the input, I appreciate it.

Larry

I am glad the story ended happily!  Nice work.