HI fellow boaters and especially...

[OLLI]

HI fellow boaters and especially 'vintage Sea Ray (boat) owners'. Sea Ray say they get better with age I'm not really sure about the boat but I know we do!!

So to my first post:  Please can someone out there help ?

I have a 1994 Sundancer 370, which is currently in Spain. The boat has a pair of  Volvo KAMD 42 Pentas. Both shafts seals are leaking and I am taking on water which fortunately my pumps can handle but,  l do need to fix them. The boat was in Mallorca and it had a 10 hour rough run to get it across to the mainland and l think that the not normal type operation disturbed all the crud that wa's kepimg the shafts from leaking badly.

So here is where I need help...

I have been told several different solutions to get to the seals to replace them, such as I need a very small wiry  (probably young) mechanic in order to get down to change the seals and then l wax told, no that won't work as you have to pull the gearbox or maybe even the engine/'s in order to get to them. The latter sounds very costly and yes, l know engineers (marine and auto) do ridiculous things when designing boats because they never think about the poor mechanic who has to service them later, but surely to change a couple of hundred dollar seals !

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers.

Sundancer 370.

[wingless]

Welcome to the forum.

If original, the dripless seal is probably a Tides Strong Seal.

It has outlasted the service life and should be replaced. That seal has been replaced by the Tides Sure Seal. Other brands are also available.

Never depend on the bilge pumps to keep the boat floating. Yank the boat and fix the problem.

Assuming the access is similar to my 2000 380DA the parts can all be reached w/o issues.

The best replacement option is to select a seal with dual water ports, even if the existing part has only one, so the seal will be fine if the boat must ever be operated using only one engine.

Verify the engines supply sufficient raw water. Correct the issues if required.

Use a seal protector during disassembly / reassembly.

Position the dripless seal carrier to a different location on the shaft each time a new seal is put in service.

My boat always has a spare seal on the shaft. That spare is made active each time I swap seals, w the new replacement becoming the spare.