lunched my driveshaft

A little back story ;
So I was on vacation for 10 days and pulling a crap load of kids on tubes and stuff and one evening we went out to take a night swim and pulling out of the 5mph zone as I started to throttle up the boat free revved and stopped. I thought my prop fell off ( i dont know why lol ) . I jumped in and saw the prop was still there and then I though oh no my tranny or vdrive took a crap on me . So I got towed in and put it on the trailer and began to look for what went wrong . I could put it in gear and the coupler behind the vdrive would spin but there was no forward propulsion . I took a minute to figure out that the brass square stock key in the coupler disintegrated . There was a big chunk of the key way chunked out of the shaft but still had a good third of the keyway left so I had a friend bring me some steel square stock and cobbled it back together . I was able to use it the rest of the trip just no more towing and really easy throttling .

I'm getting the new shaft today from Elbert's and hopefully installing it tonight . Ive done one in years past and I remember it being pretty straight forward but if any of you have a suggestions for making the job easier and help make it a permanent forever repair I'm all ears . BTW Elberts is pretty cool seems like a family deal and I love that .

Elberts is awesome and the are shaft system they sell is top notch. Job is straight forward but I woul recommend putting in a pss dripples shaft seal if you do not already have one.

I wanted to do the drip less system but I just can't afford it right now . I've had way to many unexpected expenses come up the last couple weeks . Thankfully my boat doesn't take on much water at all .

Make sure you do a proper alignment. That's most likely why it failed in the first place. Get some Gortex packing for the shaft log. Damn close to dripless.

Originally Posted by baitkiller

Make sure you do a proper alignment. That's most likely why it failed in the first place. Get some Gortex packing for the shaft log. Damn close to dripless.

Hi , Are you saying the drive shaft may have failed from improper alignment ? I believe the guy before me or a hack shop had it apart at some point and when it was put back together the big nut in the coupler wasn't tightened enough not to mention the set screw didn't have any signs of lock tight on it what so ever . The shaft didn't actually break it appeared the set screw was loose and the big nut backed off . Then from towing the big tube and boarding and forward to reverse shifting on and off the trailer and docking caused the brass square stock in there to get really beat up and fail from the coupler jacking back and forth on the shaft and square stock from being loose which allowed the coupler to eventually free spin on the shaft.
I felt it necessary to replace the shaft because the key way was in really rough shape and I didn't want to take any chances out on the lake or especially the delta with the family on board . Any who, since I'm a gorilla I'm pretty positive I got new one tightened properly .The new drive shaft system came with new coupler and nuts and keys (steel this time at the coupler) and the set screw came with that good thick lock tight stuff already applied to it . I hope it doesn't need an alignment as I'm supposed to take the family out this weekend . Also I never had any kind of vibration what so ever the boat is super smooth at all RPM's . I'm sure the Acme prop helps with the butter smoothness as well. I guess I shall find out . If I have any kind of vibration I'll have it aligned by a professional and It seems really tricky .

UPDATE : if anyone cares lol
So I got the boat out yesterday and the boat is SMOOOOTH I didn't really notice any vibrations before but now its feeling really smooth . Maybe its in my head but I'm a really happy camper . Other then all the idiots on Lake Berryessa yesterday it was a really nice day .