Axis Wakeboard Boat Forum

I would use a mechanics stethoscope to isolate the noise to the closest mechanical location. They can easily identify individual gear and bearing noise with a little patience.

Gear lash seems unlikely to me if the boat is on the water. Out of water gear lash or spline lash is often loud. But the load of the turning prop generally keeps pressure on the mating sides of the gears/splines. That being said, if the boat has an occasional misfire, it would trigger a lash noise that could mask the noise of the misfire. Mercruiser outdrives provide an example of this every time you put it back in neutral. Because the turning prop always carries load, it would be hard to pull the thing out of gear. So they have a spring loaded shifter with a microswitch. As you apply pressure to remove it from gear, it momentarily kills the ignition, allowing the gear to instantly disengage, thereby restoring the ignition. If this system is working, the transmission shifts like a dream and you will not detect the momentary misfire. But if this unit does not work you can barely yank it back into neutral.

Either way a stethoscope might be a $5 good start ont eh path to a cure.

I was driving my buddies LSV when his damper plate went out (his boat sounded similar to yours). Someone who works on Bu's all the time would know if this is whats wrong. In fact, our BU mechanic said it should probably be replaced a couple months before it went out. You don't want to wait for it to go out... when I was driving the LSV, the plate shattered and shot through the bell housing. Luckily it didn't go through the hull or hit somebody. Its pretty crazy that it ripped open the housing.

Well mine isn't under warranty but it's good to know that the part doesn't cost an arm and a leg when it does fail, swapping this shouldn't take much longer than an afternoon with the right equipment

http://www.skidim.com/prodinfo.asp?number=R140019

Well just brought the boat to a local dealer and had their tech listen to it. It's definetely a damper plate or flex plate, whatever they call it. I'm glad it's under warranty because the dealer charges 16 hours of labor for that job. Apparently, all of the thousands of pounds of ballast are causing these things to go out. It's the weakest link in the drivetrain, to help save the tranny and vdrive.

I highly doubt it's really a 16 hour job, but the dealer is making us top priority. They want that check from malibu ASAP haha

For the leak, I found out my perko flush kit was leaking out of the garden hose side. I'm not sure if that would leak while on the water though, since the spring and valve would isolate that side while using the lake pick up.

If it fails there is more damage than just the plate. You definitely need to replace the housing because its destroyed after the failure. I wish I had pics... it was amazing what the failure did to the bell housing.

Well I hope mine never explodes, the bell housing cost more than the damper plate, it was 350 or somewhere around there, If mine ever does start acting up I'll probably hear it and fix it before it ever gets to that stage, but with 200 easy hours my boat still runs perfect like the day I bought it

second video deff sounded different then first and deff would not have said normal

Just got my boat back from the dealer. They had to remove the vdrive and tranny along with the bell housing to get to the flex plate. When they pulled it out, it looked virtually brand new. The flex plate have enclosed springs and is painted.

The mechanic then held it and shook it. You could hear all the springs rattling around in their housings.
Hopefully this new one lasts a long time.

They think the reason for failure was tons of ballast and the huge amounts of torque from the LS3.

For your water leak.... do you have a heater? if so you may have a leak underneath your helm and the water works its way back under the sub floor. your heater core could have a hole or hose fittings etc....if you are mechanically inclined easy to replace takes couple of hours. cores can be found at bakesonline.
to trouble shoot look down starboard side where your hoses run and get a flashlight and you can see if water working its way back from front.

if you don't need heater you can buy fittings and bypass heater core all together or at least get you through till you can replace it. cost a couple of bucks

good luck

Yea I do but I have a salt series so it's all coolant.