Quote Originally Posted by kaneboats View Post
This is my issue with the whole process. What keeps the prop shaft from adjusting to its own "natural" position or sitting in its own natural spot or moving from there when it's uncoupled? How do you account for this?
Kane,

I wondered about this too since the couplers on mine stayed perfectly lined up. I think that they must mate up somehow to keep aligned. I did not remove the coupler bolts, just loosened them, so maybe that is what kept them in alignment.

Also, after I got the gap to within .002" on one side of the coupler and zero gap on the other side, I loosened the rear pins and one of the front pins to try and get the gap perfectly even. After doing that, I suddenly had gaps of .016" to .019" at different points around the coupler. What happened is when I loosened the pins, the whole engine must have slid forward a tad creating the large gaps. So I just moved the engine to starboard to even out the gaps so that it didn't vary more than .002" from any two points on the coupler. I then tightened all the trunnion pins and checked the gap again before tightening the coupler bolts and they were all betwen .004" and .007". I got tired of messing with it at the point and tightened all the coupler bolts and torqued them to spec.

I will keep an eye out on the shaft packing nut (I changed the packing rope again while I was in there) and see if starts leaking water in a steady stream, I may have to go in and close the gap a little tighter.

Al