C n B Propeller

I had talked to Bob the owner approximately 3 months before we hauled out. Autoprop had said that my shaft was a little light for the engine and prop I had bought from them. Bob indicated over the phone that the cost would be about a $1,000 to go to an 1 1/2" shaft and upsize the prop hub.

When we hauled at Pittmans we had discussed this with them and they sent the propeller and shaft to C n B.

At that time I began discussing the situation with Bob (the owner). He had contacted Autoprop and they said to replace the hub it would cost $2,000. You can see my discussion on AutoProp on the Cruisers Forum page. I guess they didn't believe they were still responsible for any of this situation still. However; Bob ran some calculations and discovered that all of the drive train was well within specs. The shaft length and size were within limits. Bob felt that the biggest problem was the overhang beyond the bearing. Old bearing housing. New bearing housing.

I visited C n B late one day (Bob had kindly stayed around after work) and we discussed what was going on. I had basically decided that we were going to add the Tides Dripless stuffing box. One of the things Bob felt was that it would be really good to have water flow to the bearing. OK, I would have that added. The second thing we discussed was extending the bearing housing and adding gussets to the housing extending it beyond the hull face and providing more support. We did that too. And finally we bought a new shaft (Aquanet 19 I believe) and coupling.

All of this has now been installed and checks out after a weeks shakedown to be quite satisfactory. (I made this change in 2007 and all is still good (2021).


Grade A.....