stern water to bilge - found the leak

[Paul F]

This is a follow up to an earlier post this month concerning exessive water found in the back of a Hunter 33.Finally got out on the water today. Thought the water in the stern might have been from the rain, as the bilge pump yielded no water when started before the sail. After motoring out and sailing for about a half hour the bilge pump came on. And continued to turn on every 15 minutes. I'll save the gruesome details of crawling around with no space and a flash light. Most of you have been there. It turned out the prop shaft strut back bolt was allowing water in. The leak was apparent and continued even after returing to the slip. The fix was to take off the strut bolt's two nuts and washer. Then putting black sticky window gasket material down, then a rubber washer, followed by a new SS washer and the two nuts. No leaking when I left, but tomorrow is another day.

 

[Jim Logan]

Paul, you might want to check the alignment

paul: If it is convenient you might want to check the alignment between the propshaft and strut now that you have tightened the nut..were any of the other strut nuts loose? Check to see if you have any vibrations or noises under power now that you didn't have prior to tightening the strut bolt..The reason I am bringing this up is I had to rebed my strut and put new bolts in it, and it caused us to have to realign the system as it moved the strut bushing enough to matter.

 

[Paul F]

Can alignment be checked in the water?

Jim, you make a good point. Is alignment a visual check, which may be difficult under water, or is it more of a running check with vibration the determining factor?

 

[Pat McCartin]

Alignment....

Paul,An alignment must be done in the water, so the boat is in it's natural state. The initial check is running it in gear and assesing the vibration. Next someone needs to measure the clearance between the coupler halves with a feeler guage. There should be a tolerance of .001" per inch of diameter of the coupler. If the coupler is three inches in diameter then the tolerance is .003"Pat McCartinInland Marine DieselBuford, Gaimd_ga@hotmail.com

 

[Paul F]

Will check next time out

Thanks Pat, I'll do the checks when out sailing next. Hopefully later this week. Checked the fixed leak today. The back strut bolt that was leaking is fine. The front one's washer was loose, so took off the nuts and reset it with goop and rubber washer followed by a SS washer like the first one. From the looks of it, the original installation must have counted on the outside bedding to keep out the water. It will be one more thing to check when the boat is next pulled.