Electrolisis notice to all 27 Compac owners!

[jimyoung]

In the process of removing the housing that holds the cutless bearing on Miss B. for the second time in the twenty some odd years that I have owned her I found the bottom bolt that holds the housing in place was eaten in two from electrolysis.  The first time I wrote it off as my in-attention to properly maintain the shaft zinc.  This time I knew that this was not the case and it caused me to consider other options.  Since the cutless bearing is made from a composit material I now realise that there is no metal to metal contact between the prop shaft (which is grounded to the engine) and the bearing housing.

There (on my boat) has never been a grounding strap attachment to the stainless steel bearing housing so it sets out there on it's own, unprotected, so I have now attached a bonding strap using a simple hose clamp around the housing to affix in place and tied it into the grounding system.

I mention this because the owner of Allure also seems to have had the same problem of the "broken" lower housing bolt, and am curious as to weather all of the 27's have this potential problem.  Check your boats and see if the housing is grounded and if not, think about adding this "Fix".


Jim

[bmiller]

Good advice. I'm not sure about opening up that potential can-o-worms right now. We are just a couple days from dropping the mast and launching.

[Allure2sail]

Hi:
Found that the main problem with mine was getting at the lower bolt. Debris that had fallen into the lazerett will eventually find it way into the shaft tube trough under the tube back towards the flange. I cleaned it all out and was still not able to get a socket onto the bolt to tighten the nut. Ended up grinding of the head of the bolt and knocking it thru into the tube trough. Installed a new bolt, nut with washer and has not leaked since. The top bolt I was able to get at much easier, when I went to tighten that up a bit more I found out the nut just turned and would not tighten up on the bolt. Was able to unscrew it and now that you mention it the threads were pretty well gone. Tossed it out and put a new upper one as well. Found that a extra long 1/4 drive extension with a 6 point 1/4 drive deep socket worked best. The 3/8 drive setup just took up to much space trying to getting down there. Good luck....you might very well be right about the electrolysis, it could very well be why I could not get it to tighten up, (the threads had been compromised where the nut was).