stephentyler20
Petty Officer 2nd Class
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2008
- Messages
- 117
Sorry, I know this sounds like "just another u-joint thread," but I have some specific questions I couldn't find answers to when searching.
Last year, a friend helped me replace gears, bearings, seals on my upper unit. In the process, we installed a new input yoke, and a new AFT cross bearing, but left the forward cross bearing, yoke socket, and coupling yoke as is. We also replaced the gimbal bearing and all the bellows.
Boat ran great last season, and kept oil in the drive without leaking water into it (original problem), so that was great.
However, early in the season I noticed a sorta growl/knock when the drive was turned hard over in either direction. Sounded like it was coming from the transom, hard to pin down. Didn't pay much attention to it, just avoided the hard-over turn. Then later in the season, I got a progressively worse knocking audible at low engine speeds and idle, sounded like it was coming from the same area.
So I've had the boat in layup all winter, just went down last week and pulled the drive off, and observed that the bellows were bone dry (just a bunch of grease), the splines on the coupling yoke look good, there's tons of grease on the gimbal, and everything appears to be A-OK.
My questions are:
- when inspecting the u-joints, what specifically should I look for?
- is it usually necessary to replace ALL components of the joint - i.e., the coupling yoke, the yoke socket, AND the cross bearings? Or is the cross bearing alone typically sufficient?
- any other considerations here?
I'm leaning toward just relacing the forward cross bearing, and seeing what that does. It feels OK when I try and turn it/mess with it a bit, but I don't really know what I'm looking at. That forward u-joint, yoke socket, and the u-joint end of the coupling yoke are all a bit corroded/brown looking (not sure if I'd call them "rusty" per se), for what that's worth. It should be noted that 2 falls ago I did have water in the bellows, which is probably why I had seals and drive fail in the first place...
Last year, a friend helped me replace gears, bearings, seals on my upper unit. In the process, we installed a new input yoke, and a new AFT cross bearing, but left the forward cross bearing, yoke socket, and coupling yoke as is. We also replaced the gimbal bearing and all the bellows.
Boat ran great last season, and kept oil in the drive without leaking water into it (original problem), so that was great.
However, early in the season I noticed a sorta growl/knock when the drive was turned hard over in either direction. Sounded like it was coming from the transom, hard to pin down. Didn't pay much attention to it, just avoided the hard-over turn. Then later in the season, I got a progressively worse knocking audible at low engine speeds and idle, sounded like it was coming from the same area.
So I've had the boat in layup all winter, just went down last week and pulled the drive off, and observed that the bellows were bone dry (just a bunch of grease), the splines on the coupling yoke look good, there's tons of grease on the gimbal, and everything appears to be A-OK.
My questions are:
- when inspecting the u-joints, what specifically should I look for?
- is it usually necessary to replace ALL components of the joint - i.e., the coupling yoke, the yoke socket, AND the cross bearings? Or is the cross bearing alone typically sufficient?
- any other considerations here?
I'm leaning toward just relacing the forward cross bearing, and seeing what that does. It feels OK when I try and turn it/mess with it a bit, but I don't really know what I'm looking at. That forward u-joint, yoke socket, and the u-joint end of the coupling yoke are all a bit corroded/brown looking (not sure if I'd call them "rusty" per se), for what that's worth. It should be noted that 2 falls ago I did have water in the bellows, which is probably why I had seals and drive fail in the first place...
