How my $150 welder saved me $600...AGAIN!

While we were at Lake Powell last month The Tird broke after a couple of days of hard driving. My slight vibration went to a horrible shake and we ended up cruising 25 miles back to camp from Rainbow Bridge at about 7 miles per hour. Yuck! (Thanks to Kevin and Ash for being so patient during the 2.5 hour drive!)

Last week I yanked the outdrive expecting to see a couple of wasted u-joints. WRONG! They were quite solid. I looked into the bell housing and saw the transmission shaft was sitting at a very odd angle. A little tug on the shaft and what should have been pressed in, fell out into my hands. The shaft bearing was almost completely gone. There should be a bearing on the shaft where the pink arrow is in the picture below. What looks like a bearing in the bell housing cone is the dead oil seal.



Here's what's left of the bearing. I had to weld the the pieces of the outer race back together so I could measure it in order to spec the new bearing.



Here's where the welder saved me a small fortune. I needed a snap ring tool that would fit down deep in the cone ($60), a seal puller ($150) and two different special bearing pullers (about $200 each). Boats are quite greedy mistresses indeed! Below are some tools I cobbled up from scrap I had around. The top one is a deep snap ring tool, just a nail welded to a piece of rebar. The next one is my special prying seal puller. The third one is a threaded bearing puller made from scrap and a grade 8 nut. And the bottom one is an impact bearing puller (think slide hammer) I made from a scrap of chain bolted to one jaw off my gear puller.



It took a little longer than having the real tools, but that's $600 I can spend on something better. Also, it turned out Volvo-Penta would sell me the wrong bearing for $54, but couldn't give me the part number of the correct one. I spec'd it myself and went off to the bearing store. I put the bag of disintegrated bearing parts on the counter and before I could utter the series number I needed, the clerk toddled off and returned 10 seconds later with the correct bearing! "That'll be $10.95" What a deal! It was even a higher quality bearing than Volvo would have sold me if they could have found the part number!

Anyway, I wrapped up the installation today and The Tird is again ready for the lake! Now...to find time to go...