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Catalina/Capri 25/250 Sailor's Forums

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A battle of epic proportion..(updated).

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Oscar
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
2030 Posts

Initially Posted - 07/01/2004 : 00:23:53

Or: The new girl wants to see who's boss and throws a little tantrum......

In the war between man and machine, I fought a battle of epic proportion yesterday. For all you folks with dreams of inboard diesels here's one to chew on.
When Lady Kay came out of the water it turned out her zinc had been alowed to expire.....gone. The result was that she had a green stuffing box and a rusted brown shaft coupling. In addition the hose that connects the shaft seal to the tube was showing serious signs of deterioration. Since this is the only thing keeping the water out, it had tot go.
Modern technology is also here to make life more pleasant, so I ordered a PSS "dripless" seal. Nice gizmo. The instructions were straight forward. 1: Remove the coupling flange from the end of the shaft. Hint: put a spacer in between the shaft and the transmission, and then instert and tighten bolts in the coupling to press the shaft out of the coupling:

Easier said than done......MASSIVE force was applied here, yielding about 1/32 of an inch after a loud metallic CLANG..... That was it.......In fact soon after that I snapped one of the rods...(3/8")
After a few hours of this I went to the first guru who recommended heat. So I about emtied a bottle of MAPP gas on the thing and raised the temperature in the engine room to 140 degrees. (Minor detail, the working position here is on your knees, head and arms through a hatch working about 1-1/2 foor below your knee level).
After trying to melt the thing the only result was that my tools got too hot to handle without gloves....no movement.
So I went to the next guru who said: "Don't bother, cut it in half." So I got out the angle grinder and the metal cutting blades and mentally prepared myself for the job, including the cleanup of all the black metal dust all over the engine room. (Mind you, we are five hours into this ordeal now). Before I killed the thing I figured I'd take a break and see If I could order a new one. Three phone calls later with discussions about transmission model #'s and standard vs. metric prop shafts the answer was inconclusive.
By now the ^%$#( thing had cooled down and in desparation I gave it one more shot. MOVEMENT! slight but definite. Apparently the sight of the grinder made her realize I was serious. It still took a good half hour, but slowly it came off.
Cleanup, installation of the dripless was a breeze after that. The only problem is that I can't sit on my knees anymore.....It's hell getting old.

Oscar
Catalina 42 # 76, Lady Kay
Catalina 250WB#618 Currently FOR SALE:
http:www.woodenshoemusic.com/C250WB

Lady Kay IV, Dragonfly 25 # 54 Former C30#618-C250WB#618-C42#76

Edited by - Oscar on 07/01/2004 11:43:04

Captb
Deckhand

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2 Posts

Response Posted - 07/01/2004 : 11:55:04

Oscar
Just a thought about the dripless packing. I thought about putting one on Obrigado but after the trans failure I had a different view. With the conventional packing I was able to slide the prop shaft back to allow enough room to remove the trans without hauling the boat. At that time it appeared to me if I had installed the PSS dripless seal the boat would of had to been hauled to move the shaft. I did not know if you loosened the sealing ring on the PSS seal can you slide the shaft back and get it to reseal in the water? Also some of the boats I know of that have them the owners forgot to bled the traped air out of the bellows which led to seal failure from heat. I know the high speed one comes with a bleeder. Again just a thought. Hope the bottom job is progressing so you can get into the water.

Paul
Cat 36 Obrigado

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OJ
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
4382 Posts

Response Posted - 07/01/2004 : 19:39:16

This is like maintaining a house . . . there's<i> always something!</i>

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Dave Bristle
Master Marine Consultant

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Djibouti
10005 Posts

Response Posted - 07/01/2004 : 21:39:57

17-foot-itis... I don't have it!

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The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.