Flying Pig wrote in
:

Hi, Y'all,

I'm enjoying the arguments :{))

While I was aware, of course, of the intricacies of alignment, I'd not
seen the westerbeke manual pages.

In fact, I did just as it suggested. Once I got it aligned, I pulled
the bolts and rotated the tranny 1/4 turn and reinserted the bolts.
Pulled mightily as I twisted my wrist, and repeated my feeler gauge
bits at the entire circumference, rotated 90° per time. Can't get the
gauge between any of the faces...

There are actually more than one Bruce (the other being someone I met
in the Endeavour group many years ago, who splashed his 43 after 10
years ashore, recently) who've had no movement once back in the water
for a time; I'm hopeful I'll have the same results, but am prepared to
do battle with the system again as needed.

L8R, y'all - pix to come.

Skip


Not good. You want enough clearance to get a feeler gauge in there, then
rotate the two halves of the coupling TOGETHER while you check the
clearance remains the same (at 4 positions round the coupling 90 deg
apart). Twisting one half of the coupling 90 degrees only proves that
the flanges are reasonably flat and square to the shafts. As you had
the flanges jammed together, the shaft may be under enough compression
load to bend it slightly to conform to the gearbox flange, hiding any
misalignment.

--
Ian Malcolm. London, ENGLAND. (NEWSGROUP REPLY PREFERRED)
ianm[at]the[dash]malcolms[dot]freeserve[dot]co[dot]uk
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