ZF 350 poops the bed in Daytona Beach, FL

[motoryacht lover]

Just got back from the Bahamas and running the ICW to get back to SC. After long no wake zone powered up and hellacious noise from the port gear. Dove under the boat and no fouling. Went to the engine room and oil is under the gear. Limped into Daytona Beach and the only place that can haul a boat with an 18' beam is Sea Love Boat Yard at Ponce inlet. I realize you don't need to haul the boat to deal with the gear but I wonder if the running gear is the cause of the problem. Do any on you know anything about Sea Love and do you know of a good ZF outfit in the Daytona area. Thanks for your time.

 

[Boatsb]

Hauling will make it worse to work on.

Separate the start and gear. Start up and put it in gear. That will tell you if it's the running gear pretty fast.

 

[Cricket]

Why would you assume your running gear broke the ZF gear, parts break all the time. I would do, or have, a diagnosis of what's wrong before hauling the boat.
We had a TD5114a that showed really bad oils samples which was going to fail last year, the boat was always super smooth and we had never hit anything that was hard.
As far as getting the gear fixed I would look long and hard of either trying to find an exchange rebuilt gear or send yours to somebody like Acadian for repair, if they do ZF.
We had the local TD distributor repair ours, went wayyyyyyy over estimate and time, the job had been scheduled for a few months as we had the entire winter.
Would a Vulcan coupler failure cause oil to come out of the gear?

 

[motoryacht lover]

Cricket and boat sb thanks for the replies. I am not assuming the running gear broke the gear, but I do wonder if that is the case because that shaft was occislating when underway and I was having trouble getting the stuffing box to not leak. Yard in fort myers just replaced both shafts, (one had a crack at the taper, other was suspicious), also replaced cutlass bearings, stuffing box hose and packing, and did alignment. I will keep the forum posted as to the outcome. Once again thank you both for your replies.

 

[Cricket]

Was the boat running smooth or was there a vibration? Really doubt a few hundred miles of vibration would wipe out a gear. Did the yard do the alignment in or out of the water?
Something else for you to check. Sometimes the strut bolt holes will become elongated over time allowing things to start moving a bit, also have scene strut bolts wear and then allow movement.
Now the real question is if the yard that did the shaft work damaged the gear when trying to get the shaft out.
Blew an Allison gear on the way north one year and ended up at a boatyard in Ponce, did the Acadian swap out and was out of there in a week. The yard did a good job and was fair, can't remember name, but my gear to send back as an exchange went missing.

 

[motoryacht lover]

Boat was running smooth. I was told alignment was done in the water. I did not consider the possibility that the yard damaged the gear removing the shaft. How would that take place? Thanks.