OK, here goes. The carbon ring will have up and down and side to side play normally. To change it out. Pull back on the stainless ring towards the rear of the ski to expose either the o-ring or C-Clip. If you have the o-ring, cut it--but you'll need to buy the C-clip to replace it 272000135. Once you have that loose, remove the steering cable then the entire pump. Once the pump is out you can pull the driveshaft. The driveshaft goes into the support bearing that is mounted on the shock mount. Once removed just take the hose clamps off the bellows and replace those parts--simple. Now it's time for parts inspection. The end of the driveshaft that goes into the main driveshaft from the PTO SHOULD have a plastic cap on it. That plastic cap actually goes INTO the coupler internally and the splines line up. That bushing will keep the coupler concentric to the shaft, if it's missing you may get a vibration. The one in my HX was gone. It will clip onto the ball on the driveshaft and stay there and I put a little grease on it before assembly. I also inspected the carrier bearing, to do this you MUST, ABSOLUTELY MUST have the engine alignment tool to align the carrier bearing correctly. So if you don't have that don't even touch it. When I took mine off (the 4 nuts and bolts on the X of the carrier set up), I could tell that it was misaligned, the front seal was worn on the bottom and the rear seal was worn on the top. Once you bolt the X back in you will see all the 6 nuts in a circle, to align the carrier bearing to the pump you just loosen the nuts and that carrier bearing is like a ball of sorts, you can rotate that bearing 360 degrees. so you line that up but the end of the alignment shaft has to go into the coupler too, so you need to reach around the shock mount to lift it and align it. Once you have it inserted into the coupler you can begin to snug up the 6 nuts around the carrier bearing. Once aligned, put the driveshaft and pump bank in and you should use a new neoprene seal on the pump support mount to seal the pump.
You can see the 4 nuts that mount the carrier assembly. I think I had the water box out to fit my fat arms in there.
You can see teh stainless ring, push that towards the bellow to uncover the o-ring. You can also see how much gap there is around the carbon seal--normal
This is the end of the shaft without and with the plastic alignment bushing. I bought them for a 97 XP since the ones for the HX were discontinued, they work perfect since the driveline is almost 100% the same.
Part# for the plastic bushings, I order like 3 or 4 just to be on the safe side
This is what the carrier bearing looks like, just behind the zerk fitting you can see that is all cut at a radius, that is what allows you to pivot the carrier bearing as well as the loose nuts allow you to move the bearing laterally.
