Hi Had an interesting one yesterday. Left harbour after usual checks (Good blast ahead and asten) but did notice an new sort of rattling coming from sail drive area. Notice that the insulation had fallen away by the exhaust access and replaced this and rattling stopped (or reduced) so though all was okay. After 10 minutes at sea while pushing up to 1800RPM suddenly lost drive both ahead and astern. Managed to sail back to the marina and jury rig the outboard to the boarding ladder, got me alongside okay. Tested drive again and all was fine. Checked the cable gear linkage and all was tight at the inner and outer gear cable so convinced the gear leaver was working. Lifted out and noticed the sail drive anode rattling also the alan key bolt in the center of the cone was not as tight as I would have liked. Cone was on firm and looked okay. The yard suggested that rubber vulcanizing between the propeller drive and the propeller blades had failed. Fitted the new prop (I carry a spare) tightened all up and back in the water within the hour. What I should have done was to put the engine in gear while out of the water and tried to turn the prop to see if in fact I did have a Vulcanizing failure before I changed the prop. Any others had this and anyway to test the old prop. Does anybody have a repair solution for the failed vulcanizing if that is what failed. Could this have been anything else? The Yard engineer did change the sail drive lower bearing this winter.
