Early 80s H36 Strut

[chichiflys]

Good afternoon all,
We're in the midst of some winter projects, one of which is replacing the now 42+ year old prop shaft strut. Living in Maryland we are lucky in that Miller's Island Propellor shop in Baltimore still carries the struts. In case anyone has done research and found the information on SBO's website to be confusing, fear not, it is confusing and incorrect.

I went to the shop today in Baltimore and the foreman concluded that model H-34 (to the left of my pink strut) is the proper model number (not H-33 which is to the right) to be used to replace the stock version (at least that is the case for an early 80's H36 sailboat, ours is an '82). The dimensions on the website (including those from Dahler Marine which was the OEM supplier) are incorrect. Here is a snap shot of my old and completely galvanically compromised strut compared to the H-33 and H-34 models. Note the new versions are in an "un-processed" condition, they still need to be cleaned up quite a bit. Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Marc

 

[Ralph Johnstone]

Here is a snap shot of my old and completely galvanically compromised strut

It doesn't look too healthy.

Any chance you could scrape the surface of your old strut to a few 0.001" and show us what it looks like under the pink skin ? It would be interesting to see how deep the dezincification goes.

Thanks if you would.

 

[heritage]

Good information. You might want to do what I did and fit a small mushroom zinc on your new strut.

 

[chichiflys]

I can certainly grind down some of the strut when I get it back, but the pink is pretty deep. You can kind of see it on the picture, I sanded a small area on the flat part....but I'll inquire about attaching a small zinc to the strut.

As an alternative I was planning to bond one of the strut mounting bolts inside the boat to the engine using some heavy gauge wire...was going to add the shaft log as well to that "circuit" - its my understanding that should then be able to protect the strut and shaft log using the zincs that are on the prop shaft....but if I can safely attached a zinc to the strut without compromising it's strength that may be easier?