Water Pump seals ?

[Ed@deathwish-outboards]

I have done a couple of these with good results. However I do have a lathe. I set the shaft in the lathe and turn down the rusty spot to nearly smooth finish. You want a sleeve thickness of about .020-.030 so you have to take twice that off the diameter of the shaft. Then take a piece of 305 stainless tube and bore and ream it to a couple thousandths under the size of the shaft. Put a little red Loctite on the shaft and drive the stainless tube into place. Let it set over night and then turn and polish the sleeve down to the original diameter. It is important to remember where the pin or key goes before the sleeve goes on.

A rusty shaft or pitted one is going to eat up a new seal. So if you can clean it up with emery cloth or sand paper it is better than nothing. Seals are slightly undersized so they will hold as they wear. So if your rust or pitting is not that bad It might work well for you.

[Ed@deathwish-outboards]

I found some pictures. They show the shafts before during and after kind of.
Guess I didn’t get any of making the sleeves. This one is a 3.9 Merc.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Mumbles.

[Ed@deathwish-outboards]

This one was a 200 Merc. I think they were both late 60s to 70s motors.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Mumbles.

[billw]

It’s always great to have a lathe. It gives so many options. I wish I had one.

If the intsaled seal has “flats” on it, I can’t say whether it will work or not. I guess if it passed a pressure test of five PSI or better, I would try and run it. When you install a speedi-sleeve, you do have to be sure that the rust is gone, enough that you are driving it over a shaft of a true diameter that the sleeve was intended to fit. The sleeves are very thin, so they are a little fragile until they are installed. They are so expensive, too, that it makes great sense to prep well. I have used 120 grit sanding strips to do this, because I don’t have a lathe.You only get one shot at the installation. Also, some of the shafts on Mercurys I have repaired have been so bad that, I have put a JB Weld-type product in the damaged area and then driven the seal over it before the material cured.

With ALL my engines, I change the gear oil after every single run, whether they need it or not. It doesn’t take much time and is about as cheap insurance as you can get.

Long live American manufacturing!

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by billw.

[Ed@deathwish-outboards]

Fourteen years ago I drove 75 miles to look at a Craftsman lathe advertised on Craigslist. I paid $250.00 for a tool chest full of tooling and half a truck load of parts. When all was sorted out I found I had parts of a 6″ Atlas lathe, parts of an Atlas milling machine, most of a 12″ x 36″ Craftsman/Atlas lathe and some pieces I may never know what they are for. After about a year of completely striping,cleaning, hunting missing parts and then re assembling and setting up I had a working machine which a lot of true machinists would argue is only a cousin of a real lathe. However it works very well for what I do with it. In addition to drive shafts I have used it to true up flywheels and even turn a float hing pin for an old Tillotson Carb.

Back to drive shafts, if you can put one end of a shaft in the chuck of a drill and the other end in a hole in a board with a piece of oily rag to lubricate it, then one person can control the rotation of the shaft while another holds the emery cloth or sandpaper to the sealing surface. That makes a primitive lathe but it is better than none at all. When I do something like this I use a piece of flat steel or even hardwood behind the emery cloth to make sure you are sanding or polishing evenly across the surface.

[Mumbles]

More Merc driveshaft repairs! Here’s three late 60’s Merc 200 driveshafts and non of them were usable so I ended up making one out of two. The one which was good in the water pump area had bad splines on top and one of the ones with rust in that area had good splines. The third shaft was worn out top and bottom. After cutting off the good lower section, it and the good upper got turned for a good fit before welding them together in the lathe. Since the welded joint is above the water pump, the finish didn’t have to be too critical.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Mumbles.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Mumbles.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Mumbles.

[elgin2]

My Dad took one to a machine shop and had them build it up in the pitted area and turn it down to the correct diameter.

[Mumbles]

That could be done to but if I was going to spend the bucks, I’d look for a shop which could spray weld the area and then centerless grind the shaft to size. The only problem is I wouldn’t know what size to get it ground to unless I had a good one for reference.

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