what I found ...
When I was looking for my current boat, I was seriously interested in a neat semi-custom race/cruise boat that had an OMC sail drive, so I did some research and asked about it on this forum. In summary, the comments I got, validated by the archives, suggested that the lower units rust out and parts are hard/impossible to come by. Several posters commented about boats that had had the units removed, glassed over the hole, and replaced the whole thing w/an outboard. If I were you, I'd do some pretty heavy research, both here and elsewhere, before I got into one. Not that I wouldn't buy a boat equipped w/one ... but it would certainly be a price factor. I priced potential problems into my offer and the owner wouldn't go there. So I walked away, not because of the OMC but because the owner wouldn't make it a price factor. If you like the boat and it's a "sweet deal", you can use the unit till it goes south, and then repower w/an OB ... that is, if the deal is sweet enough to justify any later headaches. My 2 cents. Tom Monroe Carlyle Lake
