Volvo Penta 120sb Saildrive. (Corroded)

[Sunbird]

Hey guys

I made the unfortunate discovery that my saildrive leg has corroded leaving my saildrive oil nice and milky. A dive inspection revealed the corrosion as the culprit of the oil color. Somehow the anode was only slightly corroded, meaning it did not make good contact with the aluminum body of the saildrive. Also, it seems the saildrive is not electrically isolated from the engine as expected from a penta. A resistance measurement reveals 0 ohms from engine to transmission. The corrosion happened so quick (2-3 months) that it had to be an electrical leak, as opposed to standard galvanic corrosion.

It seems as though I have no option other than to rebuild the gears into a new housing before the water in the oil starts to corrode the gears.

I will get the opportunity to have my boat out of the water for 2 days. Instead of doing a rush job I want to remove the saildrive leg, plug the hole with a custom plate, and put the boat back into the water. This will give me ample time to rebuild the gears into the housing.

I know that to remove the entire sail drive, the engine need to be removed so that the sail drive unit can be lifted upwards out of its mounting. However I would like to remove the leg only. From beneath the boat. Disconnect it from the transmission and then pulling it downwards. I need to know if this is possible and if the transmission will leave a flush cavity that could be plugged with a custom cap, before launching the boat back into the water.

The attached image will explain what I am trying to achieve. I would like to know if anyone has ever removed a saildrive leg from the bottom, as opposed to the standard way of sliding the engine forward and removing the entire saildrive upwards out of the boat.

[Cvj]

Check out my post here. In my case, the saildrive had to be lifted out of the boat :

SailDrive Anode