In any case, it came off and I ended up replacing it with a Lewmar ProFish 700 for three reasons - 1) same horizontal type as was there, 2) it has free fall which the old did not, and 3) West Marine had them at 30% off a while back and that was too good of a deal to pass up. Motor was still good but something in the gears was binding, couldn't get the topmost gear off to get underneath and see what was happening but I'm guessing water intrusion and some corrosion over time bound things up.
Not a lot of complaints, it worked when I needed it to (up until that last time) but was power up/power down, and while it seemed to have good pulling power it was somewhat slow.
The original Simpson Lawrence Horizon 500 on my 265 died last summer, it was there when I got the boat and I'm assuming was a factory installed option so it had 14 years of life on it.
