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.

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.

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.

Isn't this a design where the water from the engine provides the lubrication?

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 tube into the packing is likely for a lantern ring, or at least some type of gland flushing water.

On the Coot, there is water lubrication toward the rear of the shaft, as well as grease lubrication (note yellow cap) midway.

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.

markpierce said:

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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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...

Northern Spy said:

Just saying...

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Just saying some things may be water-lubricated and some may be grease-lubricated as shown in my photo.

Well all-righty then.

C lectric said:

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.

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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.

manyboats said:

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.

Click to expand...

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.

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.

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.

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)

Cheers
Benn

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.

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.

lelievre12 said:

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.

Click to expand...

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.

manyboats said:

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.
............. .

Click to expand...

I was just thinking it could be another brand of the same type of seal. I really don't know. I just wanted to throw that out there just in case.

Tidahapah said:

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)

Cheers
Benn

Click to expand...

My shaft logs are somewhat hard to access, so years ago, when I just got my boat, I considered installing dripless shaft seals. But I was told by others that I would be better off just repacking with Gore Tex. So I did and couldn't be happier. No drip needed and longer lasting than standard packing too.

Benn, is it the bellow of the dripless system that's prone to failure?

Marin said:

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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I think this is correct, however, with the PSS system (which I have) the "book" mentions burping the system when splashing the boat.

Here you can see my system, it drips and it requires grease. I have been told that turn few rounds of grease (propshaft grease that is) after couple hours of running. Also few turns to stop the dripping while the boat is not moving...

The narrowboats we use in the UK have a similar setup to Tiku's. Just one brass cylinder and screw plunger but the practice is to give it a quarter turn every other day of running.

If I have long period time where I will not use the boat I spin the packing nut off and fill the cup full of grease on top of the packing. Next I tight it all back up and it no longer leaks until the shaft spins again. I like the peace of mind that the boat has no leaks while I'm gone. I like this grease for this job it is really sticky and water proof.

This is the same system I have on my boat. Engine coolant under pressure cools the box and creates positive pressure external of the stuffing helping to keep sea water out. Works very well. Standard three turns of PTFE flax packing does the trick. Check the nuts from time to time and no worries.

Your stuffing box does not get grease, it has rope seal "packing" that is impregnated with wax, most likely. The two nuts are used to tighten the gland nut which puts pressure on the packing and closes the gap between the shaft and packing housing. It should drip while running as the water lubes and cools the packing. The pipe connected at the top provides water to the packing and the forward cutlass bearing, as a boat with a long shaft log may not get enough water from the prop end to provide cooling. There is also a cutlass bearing on the prop end. As mentioned previously the shaft log is the tube that the shaft is housed in, it has the two cutlass bearing mounted one in each end for the shaft to ride in. These bearings also depend on water for lubrication and cooling.

awpptdt,
What is the story with the color of the house in your avitar? Am I seeing raw teak on a MT Sedan? My last boat was a MT36 Sedan.

Mahal,
2 common failures are the bellows and the carbon face seal.
The carbon face if fiddled with can let in a little grit or what ever and before you know it the seal face is letting in water or if the bellows perishes or breaks , same result.
A deep sea seal such as used on large ships or super yachts is a different kettle of fish and totally reliable and repairable.
I have had a couple fail in my time at sea but they are not catastrophic and can be repaired and sealing maintained until the repair can be carried out.
On my own boat I have a similar system to Tiku for greasing.
A cartridge grease gun , one for each bearing fwd inside of engine room and stern bearing , the grease gun is in the lazzerette.
Cheers
Benn