Is my drive shaft leaking?

[jeremiah.hough]

Ok, sorry for the stupid question. I took my boat out of winterization today. i wanted to fire it up and make sure it was running ok. I have a sea strainer so i just hooked my garden hose to it. i turned it on and fired it up. It started great and the first thing coming out the exhaust was the pink anti-freeze i put in last fall. Everything seemed fine then i noticed quite a bit of water coming out around the drive shaft. How much water should come from around the shaft? I called my dealer and there are of course swamped but he said there should be some water coming around the shaft to cool it. i did notice even when i turned the water off some water continued to drain from it. I did a quick visual from the underneath and didn't see anything obviously wrong. I guess the real test will be when i launch it the first time but i thought I'd check with you experts first. Thanks for any help. I will try to take some pics when i get back home Sunday. Out of town for stinking travel baseball.

[Jetdriver]

You’re saying that your boat was in the driveway or similar and you were running it on the hose and it was leaking from the inside out around the prop shaft?
I guess my first thought would be why is so much water getting into the bilge from running on the hose?

Pretty sure your boat has a dripless shaft seal in it so it should be water tight outside in. They do need to be adjusted from time to time and it’s not real hard to do. There are some write ups on here about adjusting them if you search for it. I think this is what is in your boat but am not positive.

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I’m sure one of the actual Tige’ mechanics will chime in that are familiar with your exact equipment.

[safety20]

Pretty sure it’s water cooled, and the water you saw after shutting it off was just water draining. Had mine at the shop the other day and observed the exact same things.


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[Jetdriver]

I guess I shoulda clarified. Safety20 is right they are water cooled, the metal collar gets tightened on the shaft after compressing the boot a predetermined amount (dependant on shaft size, Tige uses 1 1/8 as far as I know) and it pushes on a graphite bushing to create the seal. The little plastic nipple is where a hose connects to it to supply the cooling water. It would make sense for it to drip out around the shaft under normal circumstances as the water needs to go somewhere. I guess I thought you meant water was pooling in your bilge then dripping out which wouldn't be normal.

[jeremiah.hough]

sorry i wasn't very clear. there is no water in the bilge. I have the hose hooked to my fresh water strainer instead of using a fake a lake.

[Jetdriver]

sorry i wasn't very clear. there is no water in the bilge. I have the hose hooked to my fresh water strainer instead of using a fake a lake.

No worries man, I misunderstood because when I first built my strainer one of the attachments I originally used between the hose and the intake nozzle leaked a bit of water during the process. I was thinking that might be happening to you.
Apparently having one of my “moments”, don’t mind me lol.
If you have a dripless shaft seal like above then it sounds like it’s working how it should.
Some older boats have packing around the shaft that allows a slow drip into the boat to cool it. The packing goes bad eventually and needs to be replaced. My boat has a shaft seal similar to the picture above except it doesn’t have the water nozzle and it also relies on a slow constant drip from outside to inside to cool the bushing. Ive read the boot should to be replaced every so often.