Alignment - Never Easy

Just put a 20-30 watt trouble light under the oil pan that will generate enough heat to keep the block temps high enough and give some piece of mind. I am currently running around the yard draining motor blocks and manifolds just because these are customer boats in my care and we may dip below 32* for more than a couple of hours early in the morning and I do not have enough trouple lights to go around.

Looks good!
Make sure you get saftey wire on those set bolts before it goes to the lake.

eric lavine wrote: try explaining it on the phone 50 or so times a year lol

Eric, they can pay us now or pay us later!
I have a number of customers that have tried to work on their own boats and have found that in the short run it is not worth the aggravation and extra cost as we repair their work. I tell a lot of these guy's I wont practice medicine or law or whatever if they dont work on boats!

Sounds to me like the halves still need to be pulled apart and cleaned. Doesn't he also want to see where the shaft wants to be before the pilot is engaged?

Thanks TRBenj & Pete - Will do. Going to work on it this weekend.

The 2 couplers will come apart from each other. It sounds like you have not yet separated them completely. Once free, the prop shaft and coupler will pull away from the transmission. The shaft should not extend past the coupler- it should be flush.

You cannot determine alignment until the couplings are separated. Once they are apart and cleaned up (free of rust so they do not stick together) you bring them back together (not bolted) and see how well they mate. The faces will touch at one point- the goal is that they touch perfectly even all the way around (perfect alignment). So long as the biggest gap between them is no larger than .003" when they are touching in another place, then that is considered to be acceptable.

Like Pete said, you start at the strut and work your way forward. If your strut is bent, then your shaft may not be coming through the center of the shaft log. A *little* off center is ok, but you dont want it so close to one edge that it rubs. Remove the hose and check to see where it comes through before proceeding with the alignment.

watrski wrote: Using a .003" feeler gauge is pointless once you have buggered up the mating surface on the coupler.

Yep, hence my comment big hammer and a block of wood. Prying the face of both the output side and the shaft couplers with a screw driver or puddy knife is never good but! Oh-well! Live and learn.
Just had one this morning pulled the bolts from the coupler, wd-40 the shaft into the strut, PB blast the coupler after the bolts were removed, Go have a sitdown on the computer (5 min), smack shoulder of the coupler with a block of wood and a big hammer and ta-da!!! it slipped right apart. I think it is called finesse!!!

pbrainard...from another post.

"They can really rust together especially at the pilot counter bore between them (a male/female step to maintain the coupling halves concentricity). Go back at it with the putty knife and a mallet or a hammer and block of wood. Putty knife, wack, rotate, putty knife, wack. it should break loose."

Looks like I have some more work to do.

Thanks for the advice. I will use the information wisely. Will report back.

Flip - Here are some instructions on alignment:

Eric's alignment

You are missing the point if the feeler gage goes all the way around. The couplers should touch at some position around the circumference (unless they are cupped or rusted up in the pilot area). You may want to clean off the faces & pilot surfaces with some fine grit emery cloth. Once they are bottomed tight together (by hand pressure only) then any opposite 'gap' is what you are trying to measure. Perfect alignment is no gap all the way around.

The transmission coupler should spin with hand force, but it won't be totally free, due to internal resistance. The prop shaft should turn easily. If it does not you might have a bent strut or bad strut bushings. Try picking up on the prop shaft & moving around to see if it is 'happy' (looser) in any particular position.

If it wants to be on one side of the 'log' (opening thru hull) then you may have a bent strut.

You have to think about concentricity of the shafts & parallelism (sp) of the coupler faces in order to know which way to adjust the motor.

This is definitely one of the tasks an inboard owner needs to know how to do themselves.

Good luck - we will be here for your next question.

I had to use an old wood chisel to get mine apart, I just kept tapping the chisel as I worked it around the coupler.
I don't know if a putty knife will be stiff enough.

Thats also a good indication that the alignment hasn't been done in a long, long time.

So whats the problem that a big hammer and a block of wood wont cure???