Greetings! Over the winter we set out to fix the large mis-alignment between the strut and and shaftline. I had a DELRON (or DELRIN not sure) piece made that had the OD set to the ID of the stern tube and ID set to 1 inch for the shaft, 4 inches long. With the stuffing box removed and coupling removed and the strut unbolted, the insert would held the shaft in alignment, with stern tube as my reference point. There was a sizable different in the pad where the strut mounted and where it needed to go to meet the new shaft axis. I built this up with 4 layers of fiber glass cloth and DURO's automotive "Fiberglass Jelly" product. This my may be blasphemy but I used it with the cloth on the leading edge of our keel and it's still there. When used with cloth it's really tough. Anyway, I redrilled the mounting holes and put the bolts in with the nuts down. I used a hand file and worked the glass until I had a rough bed and using the nuts to position the strut to check the fit. This wents quickly. Even with the insert there is some play in the shaft so an "eyeball" look at the cutlass and and making sure the gap around the shaft in the stern tube was equal was occasionally necessary. When I got it where i wanted it, I backed off the nuts and allowed the strut to come down a good quarter inch. I injected a ton of 5 minute epoxy (it was chilly so i had 20 minutes to work it) into the gap and tightened up the bolts on the strut, nuts still on the bottom. This filled any voids from the filing and held the strut tight. After the epoxy cured I removed the DELRON insert from inside the boat and backed out the strut bolts. The epoxy held the strut firm. I placed tape over the bolt holes on the bottom of the strut and filled the holes with 5200. I bedded down large SS washers into the 5200 inside the boat, removed the tape from the strut holes and worked the bolts up from the bottom, this time the bolt head on the bottom, snugged up the nuts and gave the stuff a couple of weeks. I later tighened them up and double-nutted them. Stuffing box back on, coupling, jockey the diesel mounts around to the new axis. After launch I rechecked the alignment and I can spin the shaft with relative ease. Very smooth, no real vibration, no leakage. I put on a new 14 x 10 x 3 blade screw and away we go. I will update this later this summer. Sorry to be so long winded. Garry Mystic, CT