Who's Bent a Prop Shaft?

[Spoiledrotten]

Did you repair, replace yourself, or did you take it to the shop?  I had put a new 4 blade aluminum on it a few weeks ago, then today, heading up the river, we hit something under us, tore up my prop, and bent my prop shaft. I'm sick!

 

[BigKahuna]

Hopefully CLRD will chime in. He recently hit something going about 5 MPH and ended up replacing his prop as well as his entire lower unit......

 

[clrd]

I did earlier this year, if you bent the shaft then you should look at the gears in the lower unit and also have the housing looked at. 

On mine the shaft was bent, the gears were damaged and the skeg on the housing had a dent on the front of it, so since the gears

were damaged it was determined that it might be a possibility that the inside of the housing could also be damaged. I was not going

very fast but I also have a Reliance stainless prop so there is very little give compared to aluminum.

I was told that if I would have had a aluminum prop the damage would have been little to none except for the prop and the nick in the skeg. 

I ended up with an Insurance claim and replacing the lower unit.

So I would recommend bringing it to your dealer and having it gone through.

 

[Spoiledrotten]

Thanks for the replies. There is no sign of anything getting hit but the prop. Not even a scuff mark on the outside of the lower unit.

Chris, your response is the very reason I'm finding it hard to go to a stainless prop. I also believe that if I had put a SS prop on the boat, it wouldn't have absorbed some of the impact; rather sent it directly to the other components. 

 

[Wild and Free]

I hit a submerged log with less than 10 hours on my engine back in 07 when I bought my first toon, damaged the aluminum prop and bent the skeg and prop shaft, dealer pulled the shaft and sent it to a local machine shop that has a jig made for straightening them, I had the prop fixed at a local prop shop and the skeg straightened back straight as new with some finess. Nothing broken luckily and it has ran fine since 07 with no issues after being straightened guessing over 400 hours on the engine now.

In short yes they can be straightened if there are shops with the knowledge and knowhow.

 

[Spoiledrotten]

I put mine in the shop this morning (Tuesday) and was told that i could get it back before the weekend. It's going to be about $900, but that included a new prop shaft, a new SS 4 blade prop (upgrading from the aluminum), all of the seals needed to make the change, and the labor. I told him that I wanted to keep the old prop shaft since I'm going to take it to a machine shop and get it straightened for a backup.