Shaft Alignment with V-drive Transmission

[Outback]

High all

I have a new shaft, Gori, and Cutless bearing. My transmission is a V-drive.

On the hard before launch I centered the shaft in the shaft log and then aligned the coupling on the V-Drive to the coupling on the shaft. Next I installed my PSS shaft seal and tighted the shaft coupling to the transmission coupling.

After being in the water for more than a week I have a lot of vibration in the drive train.

My question is now that I am in the water how do I go about re aligning, when the PSS shaft seal is pushing the shaft couplings apart when I back out the coupling flange bolts? Can I just back the bolts a little and do the alignment?

Any comments

[model 10]

Many boats with a fin keel need to be aligned in the water. They are kinda flexable and on stands they may not sit straight.
I do my alignment checks with the bolts still in the flanges but backed off a bit so you can get a feeler gauge in there.

[Lepke]

If you have a lot of vibration your alignment is way off. That will quickly eat gears, bearings or both. I've also seen shafts break where it goes into the flange.
You should have a flange on each shaft of the V drive. Do the one going to the stern bearing 1st. Slack the bolts enough so flange is not quite touching at the tight spot. Slide in feeler gauges until you get an accurate reading. Then find the loosest spot. You'll have to slack the V drive mount so you can move it or shim it to make the flange within .002" all the way around. Then tighten the V drive mounting bolts, double check the flange, tighten the bolts and go on to the other flange. This time you have to move or shim the engine to align it to the V drive. It can be time consuming, but doable. Sometimes you'll have everything fine until you tighten everything down and then find you're still off. Double check until your flanges are aligned.

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, Outback.

[duefocena]

Outback, what make of V drive do you have? I have Hurth V drives that attach directly to the bell housing without separate mounts. I too have PSS seals. I remove the 4 bolts holding the flanges together and spin the shaft to insure no binding. I then measure flange concentric for even distance adjusting engine mounts to adjust. When even, I tighten engine mounts, measure again and then tighten flange bolts.

[skipmac]

Answer will probably depend on what V-drive and transmission you have.

I have a Westerbeke W58, Borg-Warner Velvet Drive transmission and a Walter V-drive. My V-drive is mounted directly to the transmission and except for the color difference would look like one large unit with the transmission. It has six adjustable motor mounts, two on each part of the drive train.

I contacted Walter to ask how to do the alignment. They checked the serial number of the drive and claimed the drive had no motor mounts but mine clearly does so they speculate they were added by the builder.

Point being, in this setup the mounts on the V-drive are redundant. Do the alignment with the four motor mounts on the engine and transmission with the mounts on the V-drive loose. Once the alignment is right snug up the bolts on the V-drive just enough to add a little support to the back end.

Other V-drives could be very different. Some Walter models connect to the transmission with a short drive shaft with universal joints so the alignment would be done at the V-drive instead of the engine/transmission.

[Outback]

Thanks GordMay for the greeting and thank you to all the forum members who have answered.

I have a ZF/Hurth v-drive which I installed two years ago after Hurth HBW 150 transmission failure. I also changed the four engine mounts at the same time. The setup is the same as duefocena's.

Today I backed off the flange bolts and checked the distance with feeler gauges. I didn't see any significant problem. As far as I could tell It is within a thousand or so. I am wondering if something is fouled on the shaft or perhaps the new GORI 2 blade is causing the vibration.

The vibration is really penetrating unlike the vibration I experienced prior to alignment, two years ago after the the transmission and motor mounts were installed.

duefocena, when you take the flange bolts out, how do you keep pressure on the PSS rotor to keep the water gushing in? This a concern for me. I don't know what to expect.

Thanks all, I will be back at it tomorrow.

Brian

[svfraidknot]

i have an older yanmar motors and the borg warner v drives which is most difficult tp work on .. we removed the motor to rebuild but actually removed the mounts with the motor and reinstalled same location i done have lot of vibration .. when i asked the mechanic said we dont need to check alignment ??? i know how difficult it is to gwt to the coupling bolts and there is a wire running through that is hard to reinstall but should i force the issue ???

[DougR]

Here is something you can try....

Back off the coupling bolts a bit and place a single feeler gauge blade say .015" thick at 6 o'clock position between the flanges and clamp it between the flanges lightly with vice grips or a small C clamp. Then remove the bolts the rest of the way. Now take your .012", .013", .014" .016", .017" etc. blades and measure the gap at 12, 3, 9 o'clock in the normal fashion. Adjust the engine as necessary to get acceptable alignment. Rule of thumb might be .001" of misalignment per inch of flange diameter.

DougR