Quote Originally Posted by squeeg333 View Post
So I've got an additional question for you guys regarding this. I was able to move the engine around to attempt to get the engine aligned, got it pretty close but was seeing some strange numbers. So did a little more looking and found out that when the shaft is fully uncoupled from the v-drive, and the shaft coupling pulled away from the v-drive coupling a little ways (to get the prop shaft coupling off of the shoulder fit on the v-drive coupling), that the prop shaft isn't sitting in it's "natural" position.

The prop shaft, with no pressure of alignment with the bolts, or the fit of the couplings, is offset to the starboard by about 3/8". So, when coupling the shaft together, the shaft actually has to be pulled to the Port side by that amount to mate up the couplings. So, I'm at an impass.

I think what I am going to do is butt the couplings together as they are both in their natural position, and check the alignment that way. If both starboard and port sides are the same, it tells me (I think) that I have to more the whole engine to the starboard. However, and I hope this is the case, that they aren't aligned, and I need to move either the front or back of the engine to clear up the majority of this. The reason I say that is because I have a very small amount of room that I can move the back of the engine to the starboard (the muffler is just about to hit the starboard v-drive divider). So I hope I only need to move the front of the engine to clear up this gap.

What do you guys think. Does this make sense. If I would have thought about it, I would have taken a photo of the coupling.

Any other options you guys can think of?? Like I said, I've only got a small amount of room to move the back of the engine to the starboard, so I don't have much fudge room for the back...

Help!!
First thing I would do is remove all the coupler bolts then have someone slowly spin the prop and see if the prop shaft coupling moves around or spins true. If it moves around, then you have a bent prop shaft. If it spins true, then move the front of the engine to starboard to line up the v-drive coupling with the the prop shaft coupling. Once it's lined up, I would lock down ONE of the front pins so that when you slide the back of the engine to even out the gap, the engine is rotating about one fixed point. This is what I did when I slid the rear of the engine to starboard - I loosened one of the front pins and locked down the other so that the front of the engine would not also slide.

On mine, the couplers stayed perfectly lined up even with the bolts loose (I didn't remove the bolts, just loosened them) and I was moving the rear of the engine which led me to believe that that couplers mate with each other somehow, keeping them always aligned.

Let us know how it goes.

Al