Sorry If I posted this twice I got an error message:
Here goes again.

Last night a friend came in with his bilges flooded. His float switch
to his bilge pump was floating. I helped him pump out his bilge and
found that he had one of those packing/stuffing boxed that do not use
packing.

Ive never used or worked on this type of system, but looking at it
here is how i figure they work. The tube is flexable and like a spring
that pushes a machined flange against a flange that is on the shaft.
Looks like the part attached to his shaft moved forward and it looked
like a full speed garden hose type flow coming out of the gap between
the two flanges. I loosened the flange on the shaft and smaked it back
with a sledge hammer after applying grease to the flat surface and
that stopped the flow.

Questions:

1. the flat area/flange attached to the tube seemed to have lots of
play side to side/ up and down. Is this normal when it is loose? I
would think the I.D. of the tube flange would be alot tighter.

2. Is that how they work, just pressure from the spring type load
applied by the accordian type tube pressing the two machined surfaces
together? Or has something happened to the system and is now missing?

3. I noticed on top of the shaft tube was a smaller tube that was
capped. Is that suppose to be a grease zert that had been removed in
the past for filling the tube with grease?

Myself I like the tried and proven packing type gland and feel this
new fangle system is just to funky. Does anyone else use this type of
system and like it?

Thanks
Joe