www.iFourWinns.com

Well I may have to take back my statement, that u-joints don't just suddenly fail. In this case, a CV joint on my wife's
Subaru, failed catastrophically, with no real warning. One day, its running fine, the next day, some weird things happend. One, put it in park the car does not hold. Next, making very weird noises, clicking whining in neutral, thumping, howling while driving. For the fun of it I open the hood with it running in neutral, what do I see....the CV stub that comes out of the front diff is spinning around, and the axle shaft is not moving because the both tires are on the ground. This car would always spin the front tires a bit with it in neutral with the tires off the ground
I tried driving it with it locked out of all wheel drive (Subies let you do this, by putting in a fuse in a holder in the engine compartment, if you need to use a temp spare because of the difference in circumference). With it just in front drive, the car would not move, because all the power is going through the now disconnected front CV and with an open diff the car will not move. It would move in AWD because the rear drive is fine. I thought it was a bad trans, until I saw the CV, and like I said, no warning before this happened.

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88 Four Winns 200 Horizon
4.3 OMC Cobra-4bbl
2002 Walker Bay 10/2012 Suzuki 2.5
2008 Walker Bay 8

1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4.0/Selectrac
2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.7 Hemi/Quadradrive II

As already stated, it's sounds like your u-joints. Since you say you never changed the bellows, either the gimble bearing, joints, or both were damaged by allowing water to get into the shaft area. Just because the joints failed does not mean it was the joints fault they failed. Do you geese your gimbal bearing from the side of the drive regularly? It sounds as if the gimbal could have started to go bad, and they ended up binding up and eventually damaging the u-joints. Regardless, bellows should be replaced every 2 years and inspected at least every year. I personally pull my drive every year to inspect everything and I can promise you it's well worth the work. With the damage you have now, you can count on your gimbal bearing needing to be replaced as well and be sure to do an engine alignment before everything is put back together, that could have also been a contributing factor.

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99 Horizon 190 - Volvo 5.7
06 Sea Doo RXP (79 GPS) / 05 Sea Doo GTX Limited (74 GPS)

I spoke with Volvo today and got them the Transom assembly Serial number. The Motor DID have a service bulletin (no re-call) out on the U-Joint Bellow in 06. This boat had the transom shield replaced after 20 hrs because it was taking on water and some bushings and bellows had failed.... she is sending me the full report. There is no other service records on the bellows after that. SO I'm guessing he didn't change a thing after that.

I guess now I'm wondering why I paid for an inspection before I bought the boat, all they checked was the engine compression and the break pads on my trailer. Oh well I'm done. Just paying the bill and moving on.

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Dan


06 H260 VP 8.1Gi DP

If you happen to get any of that service bulletin info (bulletin number, details, etc.) - it would be great to post it. Sorry you're having such trouble.

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Mike
2005 Four Winns 230/240
VP 5.7GXi/DP
1998 F-150 XLT
Boat Pic