Lower Unit Oil Leak: Fix with Epoxy?

[CI STV]

Just wanted to update this thread to post that the gentleman who sold me the unit has reached out and today he and I have agreed on a fair settlement. He’s going to build me a new coned case and ship it to me and I will install the gears in it. He offered to pay the shipping for me to send the unit back to him and he would replace it with another one that he would ship back to me, but I didn’t want him to have to build another case and then pay to ship a whole assembled case both ways, as that would end up costing him a lot more than shipping me an empty case.
So, I’’m happy to report that in the end he did the decent thing and I thought it was only fair for me to post that on here.

[CI STV]

Was doing a search on the forums this morning re whether billet carriers carry a thrust washer (more in that in a bit) and came across this thread, and realized that I never updated it with what actually happened.

So, first things first:
The S&F vendor who sold me the POS unit that is the subject of this thread, whose name is KELLY PATRICK, (who goes by the screen name “ckp73” on here) despite all his promises, and even after I threatened to sue him in the end, has NOT delivered on his promise to settle with me by sending me a replacement case that I could install the intervals in, and has long since stopped answering my emails with promises with his feeble excuses about everything from not being able to find a suitable replacement case, to him having covid, etc.

Here’s the worst part. I ASSumed that maybe this unit would have useable internals that I could use at some point, so I decided to get on with life and chalk it up to experience. But that turned out to be a stupid assumption on my part:

Since the shift mechanism on my original 1.78:1 JC XR6 L/U has been malfunctioning, I decided to pull it and the Kelly Patrick junk unit down and install the billet carrier and the 2:1 gears in my XR6. So started pulling the two units down yesterday and the first thing I see is that billet carrier, which Kelly Patrick told was new, but is in fact preset beat up, popped right out easily enough. BUT, it didn’t have a thrust washer between the O-ring and the reverse gear! Any of you seen that before? Now, I’m no expert, but the guy who’s pulling the unit down for me is a certified outboard mechanic, and he says he hasn’t seen one without a thrust washer, and so we’re wondering whether that’s something that’s done with the billet carrier or if that’s just another feature of KP bullish!t work? We also noticed that the reverse bearing has a noticeable hitch to it, despite the unit supposedly having “brand new bearings”. I’m not surprised at that, given the amount of gunk that I found in the oil.
The good news is that the reverse gear and dog clutch look okay. We left it alone at that point, so I can’t report more than that at the moment.
But, since this thread popped up this morning, I thought that it was important to update this thread, lest someone think that Kelly Patrick had actually done what he promised to do. I see that he’s still selling parts and even entire power heads on Facebook, so I hope that he’s not still busy ripping people off like he did me. Or maybe he just thought that since I was overseas, I was fair game. That’s a wrong ASSumption on his part…

[rgsauger]

Damn. That blows.

[CI STV]

The other thing I’ve found with this unit is that the driveshaft is too short. I was hoping I could use it to replace the one in my other unit, which is a little bit (~5/8”) too short but this one is even shorter.
The driveshaft needs to be around 12.75” from the top of the water pump housing or roughly 14” from the gearcase mounting surface to fully engage in the crank spines (factoring in the typical 5/8” thick adaptator plate), but the driveshaft he sent me in this unit (he said he had changed out the 15” shaft for a 12” shaft) is only 13.25” from the gear aces mounting surface, or ~3/4” too short.
Clearly, this man sold me a completely useless unit. Given that he was dropping names of known racers that he claimed he built many lowers for, he was either lying about that or he knowingly screwed me over, or both.

[Dave Strong]

The other thing I’ve found with this unit is that the driveshaft is too short. I was hoping I could use it to replace the one in my other unit, which is a little bit (~5/8”) too short but this one is even shorter.
The driveshaft needs to be around 12.75” from the top of the water pump housing or roughly 14” from the gearcase mounting surface to fully engage in the crank spines (factoring in the typical 5/8” thick adaptator plate), but the driveshaft he sent me in this unit (he said he had changed out the 15” shaft for a 12” shaft) is only 13.25” from the gear aces mounting surface, or ~3/4” too short.
Clearly, this man sold me a completely useless unit. Given that he was dropping names of known racers that he claimed he built many lowers for, he was either lying about that or he knowingly screwed me over, or both.

That's one ugly driveshaft, nevermind thoses splines.

Dave

[CI STV]

Yeah, it looks like something he pulled out of a junk pile and wire brushed the rust off of. Actually, he sold me the whole junk pile, I think.