Replacing an outboard any help appreciated!

[Matt]

Shit yeah, I make it up as I go. Just glue it on with some Gorilla Glue, you'll be fine.

[Limecc]

Originally Posted by Matt

Shit yeah, I make it up as I go. Just glue it on with some Gorilla Glue, you'll be fine.

Upset much?

Originally Posted by Matt

Probably time for me to unsubscribe from this thread.

I'll take your advice

[Matt]

I have seen boats hook when the skeg has failed.
I have seen boats become undriveable without a skeg as they just paddlewheel round.
But I've also seen (single engine) boats run just fine without a skeg.

And twin engine boats - one of my old twin engine boats had 2" skegs.
It gave me an extra 2mph or so top speed. Which was nice. But flat out, trimmed out, it was very twitchy, even with the balanced torque. That boat weighed 3.5 tonnes on a good day - spinning that out would not have been fun.

But why chance it. Suggesting that a skeg doesn't take any load is ridiculous. If he's gonna fix it at all, do the best job you can on it.

So while there's many ways to skin a cat, please be careful with the advice you give out. 90% of the time it's all fine - but I've seen enough cases where a crew does something because they've done it 100 times before and so think it must be OK. But then the 101st time it isn't.

Matey here - if he goes out and does a flat out trimmed out lightly loaded run, because we all do. The lack of skeg could become an issue. Or it could be fine. Or worse, he could get a skeg bonded on, because if he's gonna do the oil seals anyway, this is a perfect time.

But off the back of your advice, maybe rather than getting it nicely tig welded (and I say tig here rather than gas brazing for heat control reasons - to minimise the heat going into the surrounded area risking distorting it or damaging other bits) he JB Welds it. JB Weld is actually great and easily available. But then he's doing his flat out trimmed out run and it turns out, on his hull, that the skeg is taking a bit of load. We're not talking surface piercing 100mph loads - but still enough. And it fails mid run. And the boat hooks.

So lets just play safe huh? 2 of the most dangerous things on a planing hull are hooking and stuffing. Even a 40mph event is painful.
There's lots of area where it's absolutely fine to compromise, or drill holes in a console 100 different ways, but that little air/water interface at the back - is incredibly hard to predict and model.

If I put a marine engineer hat on - I'd weld a skeg on while it's in bits having the seals done. It'll increase re-sale value too. It's low enough performance that welding a skeg on would be OK. I WOULD NOT weld a skeg on a high performance application, at all, though.

Or if I put my out with mates hat on, I'd, leave it all alone and run it as is to see how it goes - but carefully until the setup of the rig has been tested and proven in a variety of performance situations. (Because I can't not be thinking about the engineering)

[Limecc]

Matt. Thanks on behalf of all for a comprehensive reply.

Need to point out I wasn't for a minute suggesting a bodged repair or to do without a skeg, especially at this stage.

[Smagu]

Thanks Matt for the advice!

Going to get the skeg welded back on.

Both engines now disconnected ready for the hoist. Am I ok to lift it off the lifting eye. It’s a lot of weight on those two little bolts!

Also you know the control box main cable the one with the big pin push connector on the back. Can you cut and slice this or remove the connector body?

The cable is routed through the floor and the connectors not going to fit.

The new control box is going on top so it’s just a case of removing the old one (it works fine so don’t want to butcher it)

[Matt]

Sorry, didn't see this edit.

No...but...were you proposing another chap to offset his outboard to the left to resolve a handling issue?

And going off topic towards that, was it a destroyer hull....?
I decided not to wade in too deep on that one since - it's one of those things where a bit of experimentation and trial and error could produce a nice setup and lots of good learning. But....

Some hulls just won't be stable on a light, fast, run. Ideally you need a pad on the hull once you move into this regime (and even better, aerated - ie steps). If it's a V, or even rounded, once you're running quick enough that your final set of spray rails are clear, it's, at best, a balancing act, to hold it on the point of the V (which is when steering tightness & weight balance become a more relevant part of the equation)

Case in point:
A Magnum 27 hull is very very hard to get to run over 70. You might have seen sidewinder at cowes before - the beautiful red hardboat with a pair of 5.7 V8s. It's a classic deep vee with no pad - "THE" daddy of modern deep vee hulls.

But my Arrow hull - which is a magnum copy with a pad added, is absolutely rock steady, has been proven (other peoples boats, not mine, I have less hp) to the 100mph regime. In fact, running it fast enough that we're on the pad, rather than the V, improves the handling since we skip over, rather than through, chop then. Which happens mid 50s. And I don't need any up trim on it - so when I do get air, I'm not jacking the bow up - so it flies more level.

So a deep V with no pad - always gonna be a bit more challenging to get to run fast & loose.

I remember the first boat I tried to have some fun with - before I knew the "why" of it all, I think I was maybe 16 at the time - an old searider 4m with a merc 35 on it. I moved the console back, trimmed the (fixed) motor out a bit, adjusted the weight distribution in it. Transformed it's performance running one-up - and it would climb up above the rails and rock slightly as it bounced between the spray rails on the V. Was much faster one up, but a bit crap full of wet sailors when we did rescue boat duty. Was a good learning though.

Anyway. Enough off topic, back to smagu's boat. I am very impressed you managed to straighten it by the way. Just go careful when you start running since straightening it could have opened up the grains in the propshaft metal that could propagate into a crack. Probably fine, I'm not trying to be a doom monger - just don't hang it out fast and loose immediately, build up the speed as you prove it out, put some hours on it and build confidence.

Originally Posted by Limecc

Have we discussed this before?