Need help pulling prop shaft

[907Juice]

Hello, I Own an 82 ericson 25+ and doing some maintenance while the boat is out of the water. I need to pull the prop shaft to replace the cutlass bearing and replace the packing gland. The flange connecting the shaft to the transmission was pretty rusted and I wasn't able to loosen the bolts. The bolts holding the two flanges together have been ground off but now I can't get them to separate. I've tried tapping with a hammer and even using a screwdriver to atte'mpt to separate them. Im stuck till I can accomplish this task. I've been advised to grind the flange off but I don't know which part to grind and what part to keep while. I appreciate any help and please be specific.

[907Juice]

Closer pic before I cut the bolts off.

[Island Time O25]

Step 1 - get a better set of tools.

Seriously, I see a "kobalt" in the picture. Some years back I tried to get a rusted mixing elbow off of a 5432 Universal and have bent a large Kobalt wrench. I still have it somewhere as a reminder to never use that POS brand again. We did manage to get the elbow off when a marine pro friend of mine brought in his tools. We ended up using a large hollow steel tube as a lever over a Snap-on (or was it Craftsman?) wrench. And plenty of PB blaster. Lots of PB blaster. Overnight bath if necessary - soak a cotton rag in BP blaster liquid and wrap around the coupling.

[jimbunyard]

If you haven't already, loosen the square-headed set screw before you separate the flanges.

Then get an old (or cheap new) wood chisel and use it, flat side forward, at the joint between the two flanges. Rotate the flange and try and insert the chisel adjacent to the bolts.

Might take a pretty good wack at first, but as the crack opens up spray some of your favorite liquid miracle in there and it will soon get easier...

[sailah]

Before I spray penetrating fluid I use heat. You have a lot of grease and oil on that coupling it looks like so you'd need to clean that off or it'll catch fire when you use a torch on it. Heat gets thermal expansion working on the rust glue that is holding the parts together. By heating and cooling a few times you break the bond.

I don't know what your timing is but on something like that I'd torch it to say 400 degrees, cool it down with a wet rag. Apply penetrating oil to the crack let that soak overnight. Torch it the next day, cool it down, penetrate. Then I'd lightly rap the flange all over with the head of a ball peen hammer. You're not trying to smack it, rather the percussions of the hammer blows assist in breaking the bond. Imagine knocking on someone's door, like that hard.

Whenever I use a torch near seals like in your transmission output, I'll wrap a wet rag around the shaft against the seal. Keeps the heat off the seal.

Are you going to try and pull that coupling off the shaft or is it getting cut off? If you are going to pull it, I'd say the skills you learn above will greatly assist you in that endeavor because it feels like a much harder job looking at the pics and confined space. I'd give it a couple tries then cut it, rusted couplings aren't worth saving. But be very careful when you cut it to make sure you don't cut the shaft.

[jhulmer]

Originally Posted by sailah

Before I spray penetrating fluid I use heat. You have a lot of grease and oil on that coupling it looks like so you'd need to clean that off or it'll catch fire when you use a torch on it. Heat gets thermal expansion working on the rust glue that is holding the parts together. By heating and cooling a few times you break the bond.

I don't know what your timing is but on something like that I'd torch it to say 400 degrees, cool it down with a wet rag. Apply penetrating oil to the crack let that soak overnight. Torch it the next day, cool it down, penetrate. Then I'd lightly rap the flange all over with the head of a ball peen hammer. You're not trying to smack it, rather the percussions of the hammer blows assist in breaking the bond. Imagine knocking on someone's door, like that hard.

Whenever I use a torch near seals like in your transmission output, I'll wrap a wet rag around the shaft against the seal. Keeps the heat off the seal.

Are you going to try and pull that coupling off the shaft or is it getting cut off? If you are going to pull it, I'd say the skills you learn above will greatly assist you in that endeavor because it feels like a much harder job looking at the pics and confined space. I'd give it a couple tries then cut it, rusted couplings aren't worth saving. But be very careful when you cut it to make sure you don't cut the shaft.

All excellent advice! I would add:
Use PB Blaster penetrating oil, stinks like crazy but works best.
Take the sqr head set screw out and fill the hole with BP Blaster and let all of it soak as described by sailah.

when you get the flanges separated soak all again in BP.

To get the Hub off the shaft, You will need to use something like a socket slightly smaller then your shaft to put in between the motor hub and the shaft hub. Then using longer flange bolts then were installed, you can very carefully tighten them to sandwich the socket between the two shaft ends and force the shaft hub off the propeller shaft.

You must be very careful not to over tighten the bolts or you can bend or break the flanges. take your time use heat, hammer taps and BP Blaster and let it soak and then tighten a little more. It should come off after a while.

From the looks of it your may be faced with replacing both hubs.

[Terra Nova]

Wire brush the rust off everything and soak with Aero Kroil for a few days. Apply heat before using an impact driver on the fasteners.

[chris95040]

This is the worst. Be patient! And keep in mind you have an expensive transmission on one end of all that! +1 for letting a good penetrating oil do its magic.

Alignment is pretty important when you put it all back together: if you've been wedging and wailing on those couplings, you might want to replace them. They may end up warped, etc. The less force you have to use on this stuff the better.

When you buy all new stuff - shaft + coupling, they even fit + face the coupling to the shaft - making absolutely certain the coupling is perpendicular to the shaft.

Just food for thought. A warped coupling will lead to chronic vibration problems.

[wrwakefield]

We just finished our haul-out and experienced similar issues with the prop shaft.

Sometimes it is easier to cut the shaft at the coupling to avoid damaging the transmission. Sometimes the same shaft can still be used with a new coupling; other times it needs to be replaced for this or other reasons.

Mainsail has a good write-up on this approach.

In our case I was able to free the 1-3/4" shaft from the coupling by loosening the two clamping bolts on a split coupling, removing the square head lock bolt, carefully driving a pry bar into the opposite sides of the split to loosen it, and soaking all those areas in PB Blaster overnight.

My shaft has double lock nuts at the propeller end, so I locked them on the shaft and the next morning used my electric impact wrench in reverse [transmission in NEUTRAL] to impart a vibration to the shaft. It came loose and slid right out.

Wishing you the same luck.

Cheers! Bill

[hamburking]

Have you considered an outboard engine?

[Ted and Relinda]

Just had to do same job. SeaFoam DeepCreep is better than PBBlaster and don't stink as bad. Soak a couple days then the chistle trick to start separating them, or try to punch out the rusty bolts then chistle. Mine was as bad and with a little work, no heat needed..

[boden36]

Perhaps a good recipro saw with a longish steel cutting blade and plenty of cutting lube to put a cut between the two flanges. Slow but sure. Once you have cut in a bit, you may be able to split them with a cold chisel and heavy hammer.
If you have air, an air hammer with a chisel blade may work.

Regards,
Richard.

[Emmalina]

Your still going to have to get the flange of the shaft ! Why havent you undone the key locking bolt and pulled the shaft back at the prop end ?

[sailah]

My favorite penetrant is aero kroil. It's expensive. It's worth it.

PB Blaster is ok for most things. But when it absolutely has to work the first time, it's aero kroil. And it doesn't stink like PB blaster although the smell doesn't really bother me.

https://www.amazon.com/Aero-Kroil-Lu...rds=aero-kroil

[pesarsten]

Be careful of getting PB blaster on the rubber transmission seal. It will eat it up!