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Old 04-12-2013, 07:46 PM   #1
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Where does the grease go?

OK, as a new owner of a Cheoy Lee 66 I wanted to service the stuffing box and apply grease. However I cant see any grease nipple?

If anyone knows about this type of stuffing box I'd be very happy to receive your advice!

Photo attached. The copper pipe routes to the exit water of the engine.
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Old 04-12-2013, 08:08 PM   #2
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Re-Packing A Traditional Stuffing Box Photo Gallery by Compass Marine at pbase.com
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Old 04-12-2013, 08:34 PM   #3
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Some stuffing boxes are set up to be greased, some aren't.
If there is no grease nipple on yours then you have one of the latter.
You could have it modified but I would guess it's not necessary.
Just keep the box adjusted properly and repack periodically.
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Old 04-12-2013, 08:51 PM   #4
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First time I have seen a stuffing box connected to engine pluming.Nice setup in extra cold climate.The warm engine water will prevent your stern tube from freezing solid.A friend off mine had his stern tube frozen and tube spun with shaft.He had to get boat ashore in a hurry.Ruined the seals at stuffing box and cutlass bearing.
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Old 04-12-2013, 08:55 PM   #5
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Isn't this a design where the water from the engine provides the lubrication?
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Old 04-12-2013, 09:24 PM   #6
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Ron it's not the PSS seal that has water feed and I don't know what the small pipe is for. Could be another water feed tube of a different type but I suspect it's a burp tube to vent the air out of the tube to ensure water for lubrication of the seal packing and probably the cutlass brng at the aft end of the tube as well.

Will be interesting to find out what it's for. The OP could help by telling where the other end of the small tube goes.
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Old 04-12-2013, 09:26 PM   #7
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The tube into the packing is likely for a lantern ring, or at least some type of gland flushing water.
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Old 04-12-2013, 09:45 PM   #8
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On the Coot, there is water lubrication toward the rear of the shaft, as well as grease lubrication (note yellow cap) midway.

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Old 04-12-2013, 09:58 PM   #9
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Some boats have a long, maybe restricted tube liner for the shaft that runs a long way to the cutless bearing, sometimes with a secondary cutless. Under some conditions, boat running, they can run dry meaning the stuffing box, secondary cutless, runs dry. The water feed is to ensure there is water to lube the stuffing box and that secondary cutless.

That water feed in the photo will be raw water.
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Old 04-12-2013, 10:01 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by markpierce View Post
On the Coot, there is water lubrication toward the rear of the shaft, as well as grease lubrication (note yellow cap) midway.

Ummm....that is a carbon faced shaft seal (where the water goes in) and a sealmaster flanged bearing housing (where the grease goes in). Not really related to what the OP is asking.

Just saying...
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Old 04-12-2013, 10:06 PM   #11
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Just saying...
Just saying some things may be water-lubricated and some may be grease-lubricated as shown in my photo.
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Old 04-12-2013, 10:09 PM   #12
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Well all-righty then.
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Old 04-12-2013, 10:43 PM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by C lectric View Post
Some boats have a long, maybe restricted tube liner for the shaft that runs a long way to the cutless bearing, sometimes with a secondary cutless. Under some conditions, boat running, they can run dry meaning the stuffing box, secondary cutless, runs dry. The water feed is to ensure there is water to lube the stuffing box and that secondary cutless.
THis is the way our GB is set up. The shaft logs and packing glands are the standard type, packed with flax. But there is a pickoff from the heat exchanger on each engine with a small filter and then a hose that goes to a fitting on the shaft log aft of the packing gland. This is to ensure that the two cutless bearings in the shaft log get sufficient cooling and lubrication because when the boat is moving forward there is not sufficient water getting up in there from outside the boat.

This is why if we have to shut an engine down we have to tie off the shaft before we can proceed on the other engine. The Velvet Drive transmissions can be freewheeled at slow speeds but without the water feed from the engine the freewheeling shaft will heat up the log, the packing gland, the bearings, and itself to the point of potential severe damage. We made a short run at reduced speed once with one shaft freewheeling and it's amazing how hot the log, gland, and shaft got in a very short time. We didn't do it long enough to cause severe heating and we checked it every few minutes to make sure the temperature wasn't getting out of hand. But it would have if we'd run any longer or faster.
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Old 04-12-2013, 11:16 PM   #14
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Ron it's not the PSS seal that has water feed and I don't know what the small pipe is for. Could be another water feed tube of a different type but I suspect it's a burp tube to vent the air out of the tube to ensure water for lubrication of the seal packing and probably the cutlass brng at the aft end of the tube as well.

Will be interesting to find out what it's for. The OP could help by telling where the other end of the small tube goes.
The copper pipe is connected to the raw water supply on the exit side of the engine HX. I believe it is most likely a burp tube to relieve any air lock in the shaft log. However the pipe probably also serves to supply fresh warm water to the log when the engine is running.

The stuffing box seal itself looks like a standard packing which I assume will be flax, however there seems to be no way to grease it other than to repack it. On every boat I have had there has been a greaser or grease nipple so am puzzled about this one. Sure I know there are greaseless Teflon packings these days but this box looks like the original 1976 model when grease was sure to have been used.
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Old 04-12-2013, 11:35 PM   #15
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There are no grease fittings on the packing glands of our boat, and I've not seen them on the packing glands of the other boats I've been on and seen their shaft setup. There is no grease involved at all in our packing system, which is the system GB put on it when they built the boat.

Your setup seems the same as ours although the hardware is different. If so the water feed to the shaft log has just one purpose and that's to feed cooling/lube water from the engine's raw water system to the shaft log bearings as was described earlier. I have never heard or been told of this system having any sort of "burp" function. It's just to supply water because there isn't enough getting in there without it.
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Old 04-13-2013, 01:18 AM   #16
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The OP's shaft log has a raw-water inlet to ensure cooling water is always present in the stuffing box and upper cutlass bearing just like Marin says. The Coot's dripless seal has a water inlet to ensure that water is present in the seal bellows, according to PSS installation materials. The grease fitting is for lubrication of the thrust bearing in the Aqua-drive system, which applies prop thrust against the thrust bearing and bulkhead instead of against the transmission, engine, and engine mounts.
PSS indicates that the water inlet is optional below a certain maximum speed but that manual "burping" of the bellows may then be necessary.
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Old 04-13-2013, 02:05 AM   #17
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The pipe will supply water to the stuffing box and shaft log, probably the box is not greased and in that case usually just packed with packing impregnated with graphite grease or similar.
Given half a shot I would renew the packing with gore tex packing that does not require either greasing or cooling as long as you don't over tighten it.
I am not a big fan of the small boat dripless shaft seals as if they fail you are in deep do do especially if you are a long way from home ( like the middle of the Pacific)

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Old 04-13-2013, 05:09 AM   #18
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Looks like this might be a great candidate to bring into the 20th or 21sr century with Duramax style packing.

A water failure would cause far less heat damage if any.
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Old 04-13-2013, 05:45 AM   #19
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This is what happens when they don't get any water ...

The darker vertical line at 11 O'clock is a stream of water from a garden hose. The orange "splash" at 4 or 5 O'clock is heated garden hose water flowing off the gland into the bilge. The reason there is a perfectly straight line on the shaft just inboard of the gland is because an oxide coating on the shaft creates a different emissivity and because the shaft is shiny SS, it does not show the temperature gradient that really exists.
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Old 04-13-2013, 08:24 AM   #20
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lelievre12 View Post
OK, as a new owner of a Cheoy Lee 66 I wanted to service the stuffing box and apply grease. However I cant see any grease nipple?

If anyone knows about this type of stuffing box I'd be very happy to receive your advice!

Photo attached. The copper pipe routes to the exit water of the engine.
Ocean Alexander uses the same arrangement in many of their boats...cooling/lube for the forward cutless, which in our boat is at the end of a long stainless steel tube that is glassed into the hull. I occasionally check for flow with the engine at idle and transmission in neutral as I found the exit fitting on the engine heat exchanger partially clogged with scale/crud on one occasion. On our boat the ID of that fitting appears to be choked down/sized to achieve a specific flow.
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