Lower bearing seal gone on inboard motor?

[ThePinkPanther]

I have an OMC Cobra V8 in my aging Whittley Cruisemaster and lately have been noticing an ever increasing amount of fine spray of (salt) water from down below the lower front engine drive shaft pulley.

Hoping it would go away doesn't seem to have worked and I am wondering if any of you guys can confirm my worst fears that this looks like an an engine removal and really major expense for slippage and repairs.

I wonder if I could remove the lower pulley, clean up around the seal and "bog" it up somehow? Yeh, that crazy plan shows just how desperate I am!

Or maybe just leave it and put a plastic bag over the distributor to stop it getting wet, I mean just one more hole can't hurt surely ............ 😳

[BM]

I'm a little confused by your description? By pulley are you referring to your harmonic balancer pulley? There won't be salt water behind there. A leak here will be an oil leak.

If raw water cooled the leak could be coming from your circulation pump (above the harmonic balancer) and if freshwater cooled it could be coming from your seawater pump. Some of these are crank driven directly (bolt to the harmonic balancer) and others have a separate pump that's belt driven by the crank.

More info please?

[ThePinkPanther]

Yeh, sorry about that BM, I had a closer look this morning and pinned it down to the saltwater pump hosing. Fortunately I can get to that! The actual water was dropping down onto the lower pulley (harmonic) and making it look like he leak was down there.

Thanks for reply.

[BM]

Good stuff.. Glad your on top of it.