Where does the grease go?

[RickB]

The toyboat versions of those seals leak too. Usually from dirt and lack of attention. If they don't have the inflatable emergency seal installed or it is damaged (usually the case) then it may as well be one of those "dripless" things.

 

[Tidahapah]

Rick,
Watching that little bit of stuff it is obvious that there is no outer double lip seal and it is not oil fed with a gravity tank so it sure has some short comings in the way of failure protection.
Cheers
Benn

 

[C lectric]

Great, a free bilge wash but an expensive way to do it. Not good, ouch.

 

[RickB]

Rick,
Watching that little bit of stuff it is obvious that there is no outer double lip seal and it is not oil fed with a gravity tank so it sure has some short comings in the way of failure protection.

For sure. It is an Italian version of a Wartsila seal. It has a seal carrier that also has lip seals to allow it to slide and maintain loading on the mechanical seal face. The problem is (was) that dirt and crud would build up on the sliding surfaces and prevent the springs from loading the seal face.

The boat had a pair of large MANs with V drives that allowed a considerable amount of longitudinal shaft movement. The funny part of it is it would seal perfectly fine at low rpm but beyond a certain point the shaft moved forward enough to unload the seal and it would begin to flood the engine room. Both seals had the same problem and the owner and captain were panic stricken thinking they need to leave their lovely Caribbean island at low speed to find a yard and pull the shafts.

I got a nice trip down there to ponder the situation and ended up showing them how to use a pair of long screwdrivers to slide the carrier forward to stop the flooding, then advised them to clean the surfaces. Voila ... no more flooding. The rest of the trip was spent paddleboarding and playing with the yacht toys.

Beats the hell out of doing a piston pull or rebuilding a Coffin feed pump.

 

[Tidahapah]

Coffin feed pump , haven't played with one since I got of my last ULCC in the late 70's. Good old days of being a steam queen.
Sound like there are some perks in the white boat business.
I am now the semi retired type on a nice Z Tech harbour tug, a pair of CAT 35 16s , just odd hours to contend with and 4 weeks on and 4 weeks off.
Plenty of time to play with the boat.
Cheers
Benn