Saildrive maintenance

Yearly Stuff..... Oil change, Ring Anode, Clean up of creatures and weed in water intakes and regular check of sea cock. also paint with International Trilux and maybe a coat of lanolin.

I actually check my ring anode every 6 months after i nearly lost the sail drive when the anode vanished once.

every few years...... I always change the two back to back shaft seals (Don't want any water in the oil. This is the most common failure of a sail drive)

Every 7 years they suggest you change the saildrive seal / Gaiter. Quite an easy job to do yourself if you are practical. From my experience it' s a bit of a waste of time !
 
Volvo have built in a lot of redundancy to this bit of kit, seemingly. Stories abound of them running on for more than the 7 years recommended life. Probably ok if it passes careful inspection.

On the other hand, it protects the largest hole in the hull. On the other hand (if you have 3+ hands...) its construction is tough and most unlikely to fail catastrophically. No one has yet posted a failure story in service...and lived to tell us about it, of course!

What a challenge for the new year...!

PWG
 
I have two friends who have not changed the saildrive gasket in 18 and 20 years respectively. Their seals still looks OK. For myself; I have gone with Volvo's recommendation and I changed mine at 7 years age. Maybe I am a sucker for Volvo's spare parts profit optimization, but on this one aspect I would rather come down on the side of caution. It was not a big deal to change so I think it was worthwhile for peace of mind.

For the rest; I can thoroughly recommend a saildrive. None of the difficult alignment problems, much less vibration problems and less 'prop-walk'. I would not like to go back to shaft drive.
 
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