Rugger

We hit a submerged piece of wood (or something) at the lake right about 20 mph. We didn't even see it. But it was fast enough to bend both the prop and the strut. So I had to get both repaired. Since I had to pull the driveline anyway I decided to replace the shaft seal system as well. My boat is 11 years old, and I certainly didn't want any unexpected issues later. For this I chose Glide's Dripless Shaft Seal System (GMSS Kit) because its virtually maintenance free, its dripless, has a great reputation and it even ships in the new Malibus. I also learned more about Glide for our giveaway/drawing on Wake Garage (nope, I didn't win, I had to buy one).... The company's owner was very helpful in answering questions and is passionate about boats. They have a solid reputation and I like supporting good companies. I also learned from other Wake Garage members @Hyperryd and @rhino89523 about their Glide installations, which was helpful. (In order to pull the driveshaft I had to pull the rudder -- and you might too, depending on your boat. This is briefly covered in another project here: Rudder Rebuild. ) Here's the Glide GMSS system I installed in this project -- replacing the aging shaft stuffing box. 1) CHECK SHAFT Before pulling the driveshaft, I did a hasty check to make sure it was straight after our collision. It spun freely, no jambs, and I used a magnet based dial indicator to measure the drive shaft in multiple areas. I checked it at the top, then by the strut in a few places. I've read that movement needs to be less than three thousands of an inch. Best to take the shaft to a machine shop or propeller service center to have it checeked... but I was comfortable calling mine straight enough. Terrible picture... sorry.... but if you haven't done this before you can attach the dial indicator magnet to a metal base, such as to the trailer, and then adjust the arms so that the indicator point rests on the drive shaft. Reset the gauge to show "zero". Then spin the drive shaft to see the indicator shows movement in or out. Do this in a few places, top, middle, and at strut, etc. 2) REMOVED COUPLING -- The next step is easy or difficult depending on your boat's access. Direct drives can be much easier. Mine's a V drive and I did not have much room to work, although I know it could be much worse. Removed the 4 bolts attaching the V drive flange to the drive shaft coupler. Mine then had an allen set screw that keeps the nut on the end of driveshaft from spinning, so you need to remove the set screw. If yours does not have a set screw, you likely have a snap ring or something inside. Removing those bolts was easy, I had good access to work a socket and wrench on one side, then rotated the driveshaft by hand to do the next bolt. Remove the set screw so the drive shaft nut can be turned. Access to the drive shaft nut can be difficult. In my case, I was NOT able to fit a socket and socket wrench in between the v drive flange and the drive shaft coupler. There was not enough width. I could not find a combination that worked. So had to improvise. I've heard of some people welding a socket nut to a flat bar to make a skinnier wrench. The folks at Glide also gave me a good idea; to cut a socket in half to get it to fit in there with the socket wrench, which is what I did. I put the socket in a vise, then used a grinder with a cut-off wheel to cut the socket almost in half. Now I had a socket that fit over the nut, and provided enough width to use the socket wrench in between the flange and the coupler. Can see it here. Now I could fit the wrench in there with the cut socket. From there getting the nut off wasn't super easy either.... I had one of my stronger buddies hold the prop while I wrenched the nut off. Otherwise you'll need to improvise another way to keep is from spinning while you wrench on it. But we got the nut off, and you can see here how it fit in the slimmed socket. Next step was to get the drive shaft coupler off of the tapered drive shaft. There's a keyway in there and the coupler presses on the tapered end. It's a good idea to mark your driveshaft with a sharpie, to see where your coupler was positioned on it. Then when you put it back on, you'll have a reference to make sure it's on far enough etc. To get the "pressed" coupler off the tapered driveshaft, I bought longer bolts (narrow thread) and placed a small socket between the drive shaft and the coupler. Then slowly tightened all four bolts until it pressed off. This took some torque, in fact once all the bolts were evenly tightened I switched to my battery powered torque gun and the coupler popped right off. Once the coupler was off, I cleaned it up the best I could. Next was the part where I actually get to replace the seal system with the new Glide system. Here's the old system in place. Looks a little grungy after 11 years/ 500+ hours. Next we pulled the driveline back out of the way and replaced the seal system. Pulling the old brass shaft packing off was as simple as unscrewing the hose clamps that keep it snug around the brass shaft seal box attached to the hull. It came off without any problems. Here's the old shaft seal with the brass compression nut and wax rope packing inside vs the new Glide GMSS seal kit, which is essentially maintenance free. You can see the hose barb off to the side of it, which will feed it water and keep it dripless. The inside looks like the Glide strut bearings, with a hump hose attaching to the hull shaft seal box just like the old one did. Glide GMSS went on smoothly, tightened the two hose clamps over the shaft/hull box. You also want to check you drive shaft to make sure it doesn't have permanent wear marks from the previous setup. Any light rings can be cleaned up with emery cloth to make sure the shaft is smooth and allow the new seal system to spin smoothly and wear in properly on the drive shaft. Forgot pictures of this, but we did clean up the driveshaft before reinstalling. The GMSS kit comes with a small cardboard or alum spacer in between the top O ring. You want to keep this in place, so that when you push the drive shaft back up into it, the O ring seats nicely on the shaft and to prevent damage. The little cardboard spacer gets pushed out by the driveshaft and then you can just throw it away. Once the driveshaft was back in and through the new GMSS, I could reinstall the tapered coupler onto the shaft. My coupler is aluminum and went right back on (referring to my previous marks, which also just meant tightening as far as it wanted to go). Just make sure your keyway is in correctly before doing this. I also installed the water hose over the barb with the included hose clamp. Then routed the line out of the way and used the included stainless "T" fitting inserted into my raw water cooling line near the transmission. I just used my PVC pipe cutters to slice it and insert the T fitting. Quick and easy. Once everything was put back together, I ran the water to my boat to make sure it didn't leak and ran the motor on the trailer. I did not put it in gear, but checked to make sure water was running through the T fitting to feed the GMSS, and that there were no leaks. All looked great. We just spent 3 days with it on the water. Worked perfect. We also replaced the strut bearings (since strut had to be straightened). Between all these fixes my boat has run smoother - than it has since I've owned it. My guess is the strut bearings needed replacing anyway. So if there's a silver lining in damaging my strut and prop -- it's forced me to replace all the seals on this 07 boat. Between the new shaft seals, the new strut bearings and the new rudder seals/rebuild kit -- the boat is "new again" below the water line. Hope this write up and pictures help someone. * forgot to mention I also did a quick check on engine to shaft alignment since I also removed the strut to get it fixed/straightened. Loosened the bolts on the coupler slightly, used a feeler gauge between the coupler and v drive flange to compare the differences between top to bottom, and side to side. Looked for a difference - shooting for less than three thousands of an inch difference. I made zero adjustments in this case.

Pretty simple project but hopefully it's worth the pictures for the next person. I needed to pull my driveshaft to install a new shaft seal system (after I had to remove the strut and prop anyway after hitting something in the water). Since I had to pull the rudder to remove the driveshaft, and my boat is 11 years old, I decided to rebuild the rudder box housing while I was at it. Very easy project but I did hit a few snags. This is a 2007 Malibu LSV. Standard rudder from Marine Hardware. (Most Malibus have M.H. or one other brand, depending on where the boat was made. I believe M.H. was for the west coast builds. Either way, the brand should be stamped on the rudder box. Once you have that, you can order the rebuild kit. The rebuild kit for the Marine Hardware rudder was about $50 bucks. 1) First priority was to remove the steering arm inside the boat. This was fairly straight forward, but it has a bolt that locks the rudder into the housing via a cutaway in the shaft. Remove the steering cable without forcing or bending it, the remove the bolt to the arm. Simple, however make sure someone is there to catch the rudder or put something below it. Also, do not lose the keyway. 2) Not so simple is that the rudder will not clear many trailers to the point you can remove it. So you need to either reload the boat on the trailer so it sits back behind it (if you live near a boat ramp), or you need to lift the boat. I chose to lift the boat off the trailer on one side. Just used a floor jack, elevated on railroad ties, and used another portion to spread the load between the jack and the hull. Lifted one side of this big boat up no problem and I was able to drop the rudder all the way out. A little ghetto, but worked fine. 3) Next was to remove the zerk fittings from the housing, so that it could drop down and clear the hole through to the bottom. Mine had two zerk fittings. Also removed the 4 bolts holding the housing together, which sandwiches the housing with a top plate. Next you can carefully remove the housing from the bottom of the boat. Hopefully it just has silicone and not a strong adhesive. 4) Once the housing was out, I used a razor blade and wire brush to clean the outside of the housing. This preps it to take new sealant when it goes back in. 5) This housing consisted of a plastic wear ring on top, then a snap ring above the oil/grease seal, and then two O rings. I was able to remove the top wear ring with a screwdriver, but the snap ring was rusted out and both holes broke off with my snap ring tool.... so it required some hacking to get the ring out. Then pulled the oil seal out, then the snap rings. 6) Cleaned the inside of the housing to remove old grease and dirt. 7) Reinstalled all the components of the new kit. Put the O rings in first, then the oil/grease seal which goes lip side down. Used marine grease of course on the inside, and also to pack the seal first so the spring ring on the opposite side of the seal doesn't come out as you insert it. Mine took a little pushing, so I used the old wear ring first to push it down, and then a large socket and rubber mallet to push it further down so that I could insert the new snap ring. Then you can insert the top plastic wear ring / cap. 8 ) Reinstall the rudder box into the boat, using a non permanent sealant (life caulk, life seal, 4200, etc), reversing original steps. 9) Clean the rudder shaft and check for burs or excessive wear marks. Can lightly smooth with emery cloth if needed. Can also put a touch or marine grease around it, then reinsert into housing. 10) You will need to have somebody push up on the rudder so that it goes all the way up, and then re insert the catch bolt. 11) Reinsert the zero fittings, and give them a few pumps of marine grease each. Be careful not to overgrease them, or your rudder will be harder to turn. old parts -- notice broken ring and hammered oil seal. Cleaned up and ready to install kit Hope this helps. I'm not an expert so maybe somebody has other advice. But hopefully at least the pictures give you an idea what you are replacing. Ours works awesome now and was obviously overdue. Total time was about an hour and a half, mostly due to having to lift the boat safely. If you every have to pull the rudder, I highly recommend replacing the seals.

Thanks to @TimbrSS and @Shadetreefab for the exhaust info and flow math! And to @formulaben, @Ninetysixsurfer and @Nitrousbird for the muffler delete idea. And everyone else who gave input on this project in the build thread. The easiest is still to buy a bolt on system from Fresh Air Exhaust; his system is proven and it's a worthwhile price. FAE is not only quiet behind the boat but safer than breathing exhaust, whether you smell it or not. I decided to make my own only because I wanted it to fit through Malibu’s power wedge, which nobody makes (including Malibu), I wanted to combine it with a muffler delete, and wanted it to be a simpler flow than Malibu’s stock exhaust, without hard angles or pinched tubes. Really curious what these boats would look like if they were designed for surf exhaust from the factory, instead of retrofitted after the fact. I removed the giant muffler in the back motor compartment and used a 2-1 merge collector, 4" mandrel bends and a 4" pipe to try and maximize flow. All making sure the flow goes down with gravity from the manifolds to the Y. So here it is. A lot of work but it came out pretty cool. Ready for summer! Overall We love it so far. Still pretty new but will get more time with it through summer. But it worked great, plenty of power, smooth off the line etc. I like the stealthy part of it, from most angles you don't even see the pipe until it comes out the bottom of the wedge. Pros -- Same primary benefit of any other surf exhaust... no carbon monoxide or exhaust fumes while surfing. MUCH quieter from behind boat. -- Love that it's tucked away from the swim deck and out of sight -- More room in the back without the muffler, even with the Y pipe we made. Quieter inside at some RPMs for sure, but not as much as I hoped it would be. -- No rooster tail or spray (so far). -- Surf wave seems uneffected -- Wedge works perfect and they don't interfere with each other. -- More room for side thrusters! haha This big 247 will spin on a dime one day. Cons -- Possibly one extra step to remove impeller. It's close. But if so all I have to do is loosen coupler clamps and rotate it up. Might actually be easier though than without the stock muffler. -- The muffler delete did not yield as much of a drop in noise (from cabin seats) as I'd hoped so far... definitely quieter at some RPMs but not much and not really noticeable. -- A lot of work! Not sure the juice is worth the squeeze to be honest. But we like it. -- Time will tell what modifications, if any, need to be made. Fiberglass work - To make this I had to obviously remove the tips and then fill in the old exhaust holes. - I also thickened the inside wall of the hull where the new exit point is (it was thinner than below) and drilled a 4" hole. Just layered series of matte and heavy duty roven cloth, along with vinyl ester resin from Tap plastics. I had all the cloth already. - For the holes, I started with leftover coosa board scraps I had from making surf gates. Cut it out to shape and it made for a nice substrate to work from. No idea how the pros would have done it, but this worked well for me. - Then glassed in the coosa over the holes from the inside of boat. Again, I layered the fiberglass material, and increased the size to capture the floor and stringer. I thickened the resin around the edges with glass shavings from tap. Once it was done on inside, I brushed a bit of gel coat right over the glass on the inside, so it looked stock again. - On the outside I had to do a little body work where the tips were. Filled around and over the coosa board, sanded and smoothed it out using 3m premium filler. This is the stuff I used for the gates last summer. - Then finally sanded the whole back "cutout" area after removing the wedge. This made it easier to work and looked better. - Sprayed gel coat using cheap $15 paint gun, drilled out the tip w/ 5/64" to make it around 2mm, which is what I read worked well for gel coat and used the same method on surf gates last year. Sprayed the gel in several steps, added PVA spray over the top so it would fully cure, and the did the wetsanding the next day. - Wetsanded with 600, 800, 1000, 1500, 2000 -- then polished with rotary buffer and wool pad. Used 3M finesse it. Came out great. Not perfect, I could go back and do a little more wetsanding and then polish, but was strapped for time. INSIDE Glassing over the hole (somewhere during one of 4-5 layers). Brushed gel coat over the top of the new fiberglass on inside in the bilge area. Now it's hard to notice anything was done. OUTSIDE Here's the filler I used. I used it because its what I had from last summer's gate project. Preparing to spray. I ended up spraying the middle too, and sanded with 80 grit before hand (not in pic). Smelly gel coat. My $15 harbor freight spray gun. And if you take too long and gel coat hardens inside, toss it. But if you clean after each spray with acetone, it'll last. This is the same gun I used for the surf gates last summer. Made a bigger tip (close to 2.0 mm for gel coat) by drilling with 5/64" bit) Freshly sprayed. And added the PVA (with spray bottle) to fully cure. HATE, HATE, HATE this part. Wetsanding -- 600, 800, 1000, 1500, 2000 - then polish w/ rotary. This took HOURS!!!!! Rinse, look for imperfections, then polish. Cane out good but not perfect. I might go back one day and wetsand/polish a few spots. Stainless Steel I wanted to simplify the exhaust flow. Tried to read up on back pressure, scavenging, CFM needs etc, made a few calls, then drew it up. I'm sure someone will set me straight and find a major flaw, but it runs awesome so far! I have the 8.1 liter big block motor, which came with 4" manifolds to the inside muffler at a 90, then to 3.5" down to a pinched exhaust hose to 3.5" tips on each side. New exhaust goes to 4" mandrel bends (6" radius) into a Y merge collector (that was made from 2 mandrel bends), and then out to another mandrel bend that points down and transitions to a 4" oval. - Bought the mandrel bends online. Chose Burns Stainless because he had some great tutorials. He was more expensive but worked with me on price when I brought comparables. - PAID a fabricator to tig weld the stainless for me. I cut as many of the straight pieces as possible, and worked with him to get it welded in the right places. He made the merge collector. - Bought a polished transom ring from Hardin Marine for 4" tube. - Polished it using a rotary buffer and the Zephyr add-on tools I've had for years. Paid to have merge collector made. Cut 2 mandrels in half and tig welded. Then I cut to length later. The merge collector Y had to sit lower than the manifolds so it was cut down quite a bit. The general idea here, tuck the exhaust down through the power wedge. And then it bolts to the transom, but also bolts to the wedge. Now the polishing. This was quick (unlike wetsanding gel coat). I used my rotary polisher with the zephyr polishing system I've had for years. And the technique posted here: Below is after about 5 Minutes per piece! Super easy with the right tools. No I did not go for a show quality shine, but it cleans up nicely. I did spend probably 20 minutes on the outside piece though, Dropped in a couple of 4" internal safety flappers..... what the hell at this point. Then assembled with exhaust hose and silicone couplers from merge collector to surf pipe. Used stainless T bands I picked up on Amazon (most of my regular hose clamps would not fit properly because of the 4"). Bolted it to the wedge as well. Should be bomb proof.