2nd Tide Marine Shaft seal

[Ross Bowling]

Today I had to have the 2nd Port shaft seal installed. James Power did the first job in Catskill, NY while we were making our way to Florida, and the darn thing had to be swapped out again. The folks at Tide Marine were again very good about overnighting the part, but once again we had to have the seal installed. There is some thought that the shaft was not aligned properly at the Factory, however there is also some discussion that the seal was defective, and we just happened to get two bad ones. Yanmar was aboard after the seal was replaced and realigned the shaft, I am told it may have been 1 degree out.

Question is . . . Has ther been any other failures of the Tide Marine Shaft Seal, or are we just Special ?

Would 1 degree mess up theseal?

rb

[duetto]

hi ross,

we too went thru 2 tidesmarine seals, both on our port side. first was the old blue ones. we had it replaced with the new red ones. one icw roundtrip later, it failed in the exact same location...beaufort, nc. again we had the boat hauled, but this time i had the shaft checked. it was bowed. it was out .007" at one end and .014" at the other. i opted to replace both shafts and new red seals. two years and two roundtrips later, neither one leaks a drop. i am going to buy & carry a spare pair.

btw, we never could figure out how the shaft got bent.

[Ross Bowling]

Thanks, now at least I know that I am in good company!. The 2nd seal failed at exactly the same spot, right by the cooling water nipple. If this happens again, I too will have the shaft checked. Hopefully the shaft alignment will do the trick.

Again, Thanks for the reply.

rb