Leaking shaft seal

[m1taylor]

I have been trying to work out the shaft seal system on my inboard on my small boat. Since there are no grease nipples, and it is fairly recent, I have come to the conclusion that it is a "water-lubed shaftseal". The description on this web site seems to fit : http://www.pelaginox.com/data/d-driveline1.html .All well and good - seawater does the cooling and lubrication, and supposedly the compression around the shaft means it is dry into the boat. Well mine has started leaking - just dripping, but enough to concern me. Just how do you adjust these things to stop them leaking? Any advice would be most welcome.

 

[robbieg]

Mostly if they leak you need to further compress the fixed face on the shaft with the facing to the rubber bellows that fits over the shaft log-normally you do this by sliding the bit that attaches to the shaft further down so that it compresses more against the shaft log bit. Best to first of all identify the type of seal. Two of the most popular are Deep Sea Seal & PSS Seal. You could try calling ASAP-they sell a number of these things & are normally pretty helpful. BTW thanks for the link to the resources site-not seen that before.

 

[ex-Gladys]

We need a pic... The Volvo is just a rubber boot and I would say if ti is leaking it could potentially on the way to a catastrophic failure, but there are things called PSS seals that have a Carbon disc at one end of the tube that butts up against a stainless disc which is grub screwed to the shaft. On the latter, it the t hing isn't set up right with sufficinent compression between the rubber tube with the carbon disc and the stainless rotor

Many modern boats still fit the old traditional stern gland because unlike the newer types, failure does not result in sinking (a Volvo or PSS failure would sink the boat)

 

[samwise]

How "fairly recent" is the seal? If it is a Volvo the recommendation is to replace every five years, although few people do. Find out what make of seal you do have and then find a friendly engineer who could advise. It may be a poor installation problem or a shaft alignment issue.