Saturday, 20 August 2016

Getting shafted

It's been a bit wild and wooly here at Fambridge today so painting operations were suspended

Instead, I set about cleaning up and degreasing the shaft tube and prop shaft

I soon wished I'd done it sooner when I found that the shaft is showing some significant wear in way of the stuffing box

That's a potential problem because the new packless gland relies on two 'O' rings to form a seal on the shaft

A new shaft would cost money we can ill afford and delay getting back into the water for weeks

So I decided to assemble the tube, shaft and cutlass bearing and have a measure up



And it looks like the seal of the new gland will land on an undamaged area of the shaft

If that works out as I hope it'll be a major relief. There's no worries about the structural strength of the shaft, the wear isn't significant from that point of view, so provided we can get a seal we're in business

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