Bavaria 42 (2000) sail drive seal / diaphragm replacement, lack of space?

[Viviane2000]

Hi all,

Our boat is on the hard now. I want to replace the sail drive seal / diaphragm . Compared to other Bavarias / YouTube it looks like I've got very little room to work with. No access at all to the back of the motor / sail drive. See pictures:

Is it possible to replace the seal by moving the motor forward? Any tips for this project?

Bavaria 42 2000
Volvo Penta MD22P
120S-E

[Yngmar]

Wow, that's bloody tight in there. Our centre cockpit 40 Ocean had space for a kids bedroom in there!

The engine needs to move forward about 5-8cm (from memory) to disengage the saildrive. Looks like you may have just enough room for doing that, perhaps getting some hoses out of the way. After that, the saildrive (prop removed) can be lifted out upwards, which was no problem on our boat, but I'm not sure there's space for it here. It also needed to be angled aft a bit to get te prop shaft through the hole, but you can instead just remove the prop shaft from the saildrive beforehand to save yourself that and some weight (it's quite heavy to lift as is).

[Viviane2000]

Short update for anyone interested.

We've got the saildrive out. But it took two guys a full day of blood, sweat and tears.. Lucky the engine has two lifting eye's, so we used the halyard of the main sail to lift the engine on the front side upwards and forwards. We had the prop shaft removed when trying to lift the SD out. After a few tries to get the SD out we concluded that the engine had to move forward as far as it would go (hanging on the halyard) and supported with some scrap wood on the backside / underside of the engine.  This would give exactly (not) enough space to take the SD out from the engine area into the boat. I will see if we can take some pictures when putting the SD back.

Production date on the rubber 2015 of the SD. The rubber SD seal still looks as good as new..

[primozk]

Hi, I had the same procedure as you describe on a Bav 34 2000 -- also tiny space. I was not doing alone but the technicians have moved the motor in the salon and also removed the shaft from the motor - 2 technicians, day and half and as i recall arround 15 hours. Mine was 22 years old.... your must be still in a very good condition
 

[Viviane2000]

Yes the old seal looked as good as new.. There was some corrosion on the frame of the SD, so we wanted to clean that up as well. After renewing the SD seal and placing the SD back behind the engine we had to move the engine backwards again to couple with the SD. Again whilst using the halyard to take most of its weight we used a car jack to move the engine very smoothly backwards. It worked surprisingly well, so maybe this can help someone else.

While having the engine forward we were also able to acces the exhaust elbow easy, so we removed it to check its condition. The condition of the metal is all good, but there was some build up on the inside. So we cleaned it and placed it back. When replacing the oil seals on the prop shaft we discovered a groove on the prop shaft.. I will create a separate post for that