We have a standard stuffing box on our boat. This being my first boat with such a thing, what is the correct amount of drip? Currently, we drip about 1 drop a second when motoring, when stationary, no drips I can see. Is this excessive?
The right amount of drip... [E35-3]
- Thread starter Hagar2sail
- Start date
Interesting. I don’t know what our temperature is. I have seen quite a few threads lately, mostly IIRC about repairing, removing, or the ever popular stuffing vs dripless debate. I am guessing that our drip rate is excessive and probably indicates a need to replace, but was looking for some guidance. Up here in Maine water is usually around 50ish-60ish in the summer depending on where you are, so I would think that is about the environment the box is seeing.
1911tex
Sustaining Member
Maybe I misunderstood...but the stuffing box temp is not the water environment temp at rest. The temp of the box is taken underway after a period of time. Do a search "stuffing box temperature"....I believe this very informative thread was a month or so ago?
Found the thread, looks like temp should ideally not exceed 130 degrees. I would hazard with the amount of water coming through our seal, we never had that issue. Question I had was when do you know you have to repack? When it starts doing too many drips a minute while motoring? Or when the sea continues to come in even after the boat has been at rest for a while?
Packing gets harder and more tightly compressed over time. When I removed our factory stuffing box in the mid 90's, I noted that the packing was really quite hard. That, along with my slow learning curve of dealing with the "too many drips vs too few and too much heat", was part of the reason for changing to the PSS shaft seal. The bilge showed evidence of sea water that was in there so long that there were little piles of salt crystals (the boat had sat unused for three years before we bought it).
The BK-designed Ericson's do have a deeper bilge section, tho, and can handle a lot more water accumulation before it gets close to the cabin sole. The Olson's have a shallow bilge, by comparison.
Adherents of the traditional packing in a stuffing box always cite the many decades - like ten or twenty - of usage and general reliability. All true. According to folks with industrial liquid and slurry pumping backgrounds, the "face seal" used by PSS and their competitors is well proven for several decades before being adapted for boating use, about 40 years ago.
I wanted a dry bilge, and the 'face seal' system provided it.
One nice wrinkle in our modern age is the availability of inexpensive laser pointer heat-measuring devices. A vast improvement (in safety and accuracy) over carefully resting your palm on a running-engine stuffing box nut........
The BK-designed Ericson's do have a deeper bilge section, tho, and can handle a lot more water accumulation before it gets close to the cabin sole. The Olson's have a shallow bilge, by comparison.
Adherents of the traditional packing in a stuffing box always cite the many decades - like ten or twenty - of usage and general reliability. All true. According to folks with industrial liquid and slurry pumping backgrounds, the "face seal" used by PSS and their competitors is well proven for several decades before being adapted for boating use, about 40 years ago.
I wanted a dry bilge, and the 'face seal' system provided it.
One nice wrinkle in our modern age is the availability of inexpensive laser pointer heat-measuring devices. A vast improvement (in safety and accuracy) over carefully resting your palm on a running-engine stuffing box nut........
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Kevin A Wright
Member III
I think stuffing boxes got a bad rep back in the old days before Teflon impregnated packing. They are absolutely dead simple and require virtually no maintenance. You should tighten them up so there are no drops when at rest and a few drops a minute when underway. If it drips a little more than that, just snug up the adjustment nut a scootch. I had to replace the stuffing box on my old boat when I repowered (went from a 3/4" shaft to a 1"). I used the new (then) Teflon impregnated packing when I put it in. I probably adjusted it 3 times over the next 25 years.
You know you need to replace the packing when it's compressed so much that you can't tighten the nut and stop it from leaking.
If you put your hand on the nut after it's been running an hour and its too hot to hold on to, or there is steam coming off it, you've got a problem. May not be overtightened packing, might be an engine mount is going and your shaft is out of alignment.
Currently doing a repower on my E35 III. I will take this opportunity to replace the packing just because I'm pretty sure it's still the original 1986 packing in there and it's REAL easy to get to when you are on the hard and the engine is out. So why not. But other than that I'm sticking with the old bronze stuffing box.
Kevin Wright
E35 Hydro Therapy
(Who just ordered a spanking new Beta 30!)
You know you need to replace the packing when it's compressed so much that you can't tighten the nut and stop it from leaking.
If you put your hand on the nut after it's been running an hour and its too hot to hold on to, or there is steam coming off it, you've got a problem. May not be overtightened packing, might be an engine mount is going and your shaft is out of alignment.
Currently doing a repower on my E35 III. I will take this opportunity to replace the packing just because I'm pretty sure it's still the original 1986 packing in there and it's REAL easy to get to when you are on the hard and the engine is out. So why not. But other than that I'm sticking with the old bronze stuffing box.
Kevin Wright
E35 Hydro Therapy
(Who just ordered a spanking new Beta 30!)