Well i learned alot in the last day or so. First if you want to take the pump, motor, lift, or trim units off the right way, you need to remove the engine. The reason for this is that it all slide out towards the back of the boat not toward you, no matter how you losen it, it wont slide between the transom end brackets.
Now with that said, i did get the lift off without removing the engine (remember this is NOT the right way). After i drilled out the the top keeper pin and removed the large top pin, remember when you drive the upper pin out to be careful not to damage the bushing that is around the outside hole. . I then cut the tip off a large nail and used it to drive the bottom keeper pin out the back side. (there is no room to do this with the top keeper pin, i had to drill that completely out). Remember that the top keeper pin has grooves on the back half of it so youll need to get a pin that matches those grooves.
Then i removed the 6 screws that hold the whole piston and pump assembly on the transom there are 3 on each side. You will need to slide this unit forwards against the boat while you do the modification below so you dont mess up the bottom pin.
Then remember that the bottom main pin is used to share fluid between the lift and both trims, it has holes in it and inside the lift shock there are rubber orings, fluid will leak out when you remove the lower pin. However you will have to do some modification to the right transom bracket in order for the bottom pin to get past it. The bottom main pin hits the right transom bracket by less than 1/4 of an inch. So to get it to slide out i removed a small thin section of the transom bracket under the holes, between the 4th and 2nd holes counting from the boat as the first hole and so on. I used my cutting wheel and grinding disk and ground a notch so the pin would slide out. You will see where it is hitting and youll see how much to take off.
When i finished the bottom pin slid right out and the holes on the bottom of the left bracket are still usable, there is still plenty of material around the holes.
I will need to buy a new top pin and two retaining pins, but the bottom large pin is still good. Remember to paint where you ground off the transom bracket so it does not rust.
Why they engineered this that you cant remove it correctly without removing the engine is beyond me, what a pain...
Hope this helps someone...
