Shaft alignment

[Soaring eagle]

Hi all
Had my 320 out of the water did the bottom, replaced the shaft and the cutlas .
My question is about the shaft and engine alignment. How perfect does it have to be? The info I have says .003 all around the flange . And that up and down is the most important, which leads me to believe that less than perfect is OK. But what are the acceptable tolerances.
I'm having problems with the sideways adjustment. I have shifted the engine mounts as far as possible and there is still to large a gap on the starboard side. Is it normal for it to be out this much? Could the mounts be warn out ?
Any experience with this problem, any advice

Thanks

 

[JK_Boston_Catalina310]

Hi all
Had my 320 out of the water did the bottom, replaced the shaft and the cutlas .
My question is about the shaft and engine alignment. How perfect does it have to be? The info I have says .003 all around the flange . And that up and down is the most important, which leads me to believe that less than perfect is OK. But what are the acceptable tolerances.
I'm having problems with the sideways adjustment. I have shifted the engine mounts as far as possible and there is still to large a gap on the starboard side. Is it normal for it to be out this much? Could the mounts be warn out ?
Any experience with this problem, any advice

Thanks

I just did this on my C310 this week. It took some time but I was able to get that adjustment into the .003" alignment. One of the problems I was having at first was that I had loosened all of the mounts to try and move the engine. This was just moving the engine side ways. I needed to twist the engine (the starboard side of the flange was fine but the port was too far away). So I realized I needed to tighten the forward port mount so the engine would twist instead of move side ways. Tough to explain. Hope this made sense.

On the mounts themselves, they could be warn out. I have been told that they generally have about a 10 year life. How old are they?

Good luck,

Jesse

 

[Soaring eagle]

Thanks for the reply! I get what your saying about the pivoting . Problem is I'm out of adjustment . So short of elongating the holes I'm not sure what to do . It seems like an extreme measure to go to , you'd think there would be enough adjustment as is. I just don't want to forge ahead when I may of missed something . You'd think the yard would have done a little better job !!!

 

[Calif. Ted]

You'd think the yard would have done a little better job !!!

If the Yard replaced the bearing and shaft I definitely agree, yards I've used have adjusted alignment after splashing the boat as part of any driveline repairs.

 

[Ajay73]

If you install a flexible coupling some additional misalignment may be acceptable. I have a Federal flexible coupling on my boat. The shaft on my C27 was severely out of alignment when I bought the boat. So much so that the propeller shaft wore a hole in the bottom of the shaft tube. I think the flexible coupling probably saved the transmission from being destroyed because of the misalignment. I had a marine mechanic align my engine and shaft when I first launched the boat but he only spent a couple minutes doing it and I wonder how good a job he actually did. I did the alignment myself from then on and I will confess I don't think I'm within the .003 but am pretty close to it. I too have reached the limits of adjustability on at least one of the mounts. The engine runs smooth though and the shaft has no vibration that I can detect. This could be because of the flexible coupling.