We're proud new owners of a 1993 Hunter 33.5.
One of our motivating factors for buying the boat was the fact that it was lightly used by the PO - it's not been out of the marina in at least the last 3 years. She's in very good shape overall but I'm not sure if the PO was too keen on maintenance judging from a number of small things left inoperable for lack of easy fixes...
The one major concern we have is the cutlass bearing. It is really shot. I'd say the shaft has about 1-2 mm (1/16 of an inch? Forgive me, I grew up metric...) play in it. When we took her on her sea trial she vibrated quite a bit at high rpm's as you can imagine but not much at half throttle and lower. When we hauled her she had about 20 barnacles on her prop and I was actually surprised that the vibration wasn't worse given the unbalanced prop and shot bearing. The prop shaft looks dead straght and in decent shape and there was no leak on the dripless seal after 30-40 minutes of motoring during the sea trail despite the vibration.
Since our current/previous boat has an outboard, I have not done a cutlass bearing before. I have spend hours reading forums and threads on this subject (there's a large amount of these) and am pretty much clued up on my options. I'm confident that I will get the prop off the shaft but do not want to remove the shaft itself - that dry seal tells me to leave well enough alone and the thought of dropping my rudder is not something I relish.
In all my reading nobody suggested taking the strut off and leaving the shaft on. It may be my extreme inexperience talking but taking the strut with me to my comfy workshop to get the old bearing (or what's left of it) out and pressing the new one in and then replacing the strut on the shaft seems like a top idea. The strut is bolted through the hull where the bolts are very accessible and though there is always the possibility of leakage when buggering around with through hull fittings of course, there are signs of possible past leakage on the one bolt and a good solid re-bedding of the strut may not be a bad idea in any case. This will also allow me to inspect the shaft where the cutlass bearing goes for damage/unacceptable wear.
I feel like this is too obvious a solution and that I must be missing something. Any advice will be much appreciated.
P.s. I know it is actually a "cutless" bearing (which in itself is of course a trade name) and not a "cutlass" but I did not feel like fighting my auto correct every time I write it....
One of our motivating factors for buying the boat was the fact that it was lightly used by the PO - it's not been out of the marina in at least the last 3 years. She's in very good shape overall but I'm not sure if the PO was too keen on maintenance judging from a number of small things left inoperable for lack of easy fixes...
The one major concern we have is the cutlass bearing. It is really shot. I'd say the shaft has about 1-2 mm (1/16 of an inch? Forgive me, I grew up metric...) play in it. When we took her on her sea trial she vibrated quite a bit at high rpm's as you can imagine but not much at half throttle and lower. When we hauled her she had about 20 barnacles on her prop and I was actually surprised that the vibration wasn't worse given the unbalanced prop and shot bearing. The prop shaft looks dead straght and in decent shape and there was no leak on the dripless seal after 30-40 minutes of motoring during the sea trail despite the vibration.
Since our current/previous boat has an outboard, I have not done a cutlass bearing before. I have spend hours reading forums and threads on this subject (there's a large amount of these) and am pretty much clued up on my options. I'm confident that I will get the prop off the shaft but do not want to remove the shaft itself - that dry seal tells me to leave well enough alone and the thought of dropping my rudder is not something I relish.
In all my reading nobody suggested taking the strut off and leaving the shaft on. It may be my extreme inexperience talking but taking the strut with me to my comfy workshop to get the old bearing (or what's left of it) out and pressing the new one in and then replacing the strut on the shaft seems like a top idea. The strut is bolted through the hull where the bolts are very accessible and though there is always the possibility of leakage when buggering around with through hull fittings of course, there are signs of possible past leakage on the one bolt and a good solid re-bedding of the strut may not be a bad idea in any case. This will also allow me to inspect the shaft where the cutlass bearing goes for damage/unacceptable wear.
I feel like this is too obvious a solution and that I must be missing something. Any advice will be much appreciated.
P.s. I know it is actually a "cutless" bearing (which in itself is of course a trade name) and not a "cutlass" but I did not feel like fighting my auto correct every time I write it....
