This winter's big maintenance/upgrade project is all about Sirius' motor - the original Universal 5424. I had it pulled a few weeks ago to replace two broken mounts, remove/replace the leaky main coolant pump, address the rusty engine bed, etc and now have the luxury of unprecendented access to the engine compartment (duh!) and a chance to look at everything closely. I decided to replace the traditional stuffing box with a dripless seal and replace the cutlass bearing. The work is being done at Herrington Harbour North. They went at it Monday and discovered the following:
This is where the shaft log hose started:
![Image](http://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/j433/fvernet/Shaft%20Seal/shaft_log.jpg)
With a simple twist, the hose came off:
![Image](http://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/j433/fvernet/Shaft%20Seal/shaft_log2.jpg)
As you can see the hose is “wasp waisted” where the hose clamp had been installed. The clamp was not bearing on the bronze shaft log casting. The hose engagement on the bronze shaft log is about ¼”:
![Image](http://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/j433/fvernet/Shaft%20Seal/shaftLog4.jpg)
Looking at the bronze tube, you can see that there was almost no contact between the bronze casting and the hose:
![Image](http://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/j433/fvernet/Shaft%20Seal/shaft_log3.jpg)
This is the orientation in the boat. You can see that there was no hose clamp on the shaft log. Up in this picture was Up in the boat, so the wasp waist is on the bottom of the system and would have been hard to see:
![Image](http://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/j433/fvernet/Shaft%20Seal/shaftLog5.jpg)
The deteriorated shaft log seal and it looks way older than 5-6 years:
![Image](http://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/j433/fvernet/Shaft%20Seal/shaftLog6.jpg)
As I had the shaft, cutlass bearing and prop replaced professionally 5-6 years ago, I never suspected that the installation was so poorly and dangerously done.
So a lesson for us all - inspect closely this linkage and water barrier that is buried deep in your engine compartment. Had mine failed, as it surely would have, it wold have been a truly threatening situation.