ZF Hurth Transmission Clacking

[unbusted67]

This one is going to go down in the books. I happen to be a lucky guy and am friends with the outboard mechanic at my family's boatyard, he doubles as the diesel mechanic when the primary guy is out. He and I just delivered my new CAL 35. During this delivery he and I noticed a clacking sound in the transmission at low RPMs. We started thinking of things like shaft alignment, engine mounts, cutlass bearing, shaft straightness etc. And at the end of this long list I, of course, think blown transmission. He and I hauled the boat today at about 11am. After an extremely arduous shaft pulling which included dropping the rudder off of the boat and then digging a two foot hole under said rudder to give it enough space to drop out, we swapped out the cutlass bearing, the old one of course had to be cut out. We finally got the shaft hooked back up, my friend aligned and adjusted the engine mounts. At 11:30 pm, 12 hours after starting we fired her up, drum rolllllll.....and.....same thing clack clack clack. So friggin bummed!!!

Here I am thinking of the worst: we are going to have to pull the transmission get it rebuilt etc. I just bought this new boat and it is all screwed up, how did we miss this in the survey etc?

What did we decide to do? Look in the manual. What does the manual say about Hurth transmissions? At low RPMs the plates may bump together to make metallic clacking sound.....HALLELUJAH! This engine is alive! We went back adjusted the idle and guess what? No clacking. Wow reading the instructions makes things really easy.

People, always read the instructions. Otherwise you may spend an incredible amount of time and money proving to yourself that you are indeed an ass. Hey look at it this way, today I learned that I never want to swap out a cutlass bearing again.