Last summer I bought a boat with VolvoPenta D3-160 A-A engine and with a DP-SMTD3 2.11 outdrive. Engine is 2005 model and has approx. 400hours in it. During the summer I found out there is a clanking noise when the engine is running on neutral gear and the noise was a bit louder when the boat had just been driven (warm oils I guess). In my opinion there was nothing wrong when driving the boat with cruising speed.

Boat was then lifted up for inspection and a guy with long time experience with boats (but not certified VP mechanic) checked the u-joints, bellow and gimbal bearing but found out nothing which could explain the noise. I also had a chat with some certified VP mechanics when visiting VP dealer to buy maintenance parts and they said that most likely it's nothing serious but in this type of outdrives there is a pretty big play between the teeths and that makes the noise.

Now when I lifted up the boat for the winter and ran the engine for freshwater rinse and glycol treatment I found out the noise to be pretty loud when the drive unit is completely out of the water which obviously filters the sound. And in addition the sound is almost the same with neutral gear or forward gear (didn't try reverse) at least when there's no pressure on the propellers. I changed the gear oil but it didn't have any effect on the noise and I think the old oil was ok in colour and I couldn't find any metal pieces from it.

This is my first post on the forum and I'm not familiar with attachments so here is a dropbox link to the video where the sound or noise can be clearly heard:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xqeu34qssp..._5791.m4v?dl=0

Are there any opinions whether this could be normal or is there a definitely reason to take the outdrive for a certified VP dealer for disassembly and inspection.

p.s. Sorry for my English, I'm from Finland.