Replacing the Cutless Bearing
So. Most of the online catalogs spell it ‘cutlass’ (as in the sword?). But I was assured it was ‘cutless’, as in doesn’t cut. Most of the searches I tried turned up the former. But when the device arrived, the package was using the latter.
Dave, one of my resident experts, suggested I might want to change it out before replacing the prop shaft in the boat. He recommended cutting it out with a hacksaw, being careful not to slice through the strut. Steve, another expert, suggested that, once the old one was out, I could take the strut to a local mechanic who, when I mentioned a mutual friend, would use their hydraulic to insert the new bearing. A third friend, Dan, said he had a bench press and thought we could use that to both remove the old bearing and insert the new one. So I headed over to Dan’s place one sunny Friday afternoon with the prop shaft and the old cutless bearing. He had the bench press set up and ready to go.
The bench press is a small hydraulic, like you might use to change the tires on your car, mounted on a steel structure about 2-1/2 feet tall. The object to be pressed is placed on the shelf below the hydraulic. The stickers showed that it was indeed a commercial item, but I had never seen one before.
Dan found a socket that was about the outer diameter of the cutless bearing. We stood the strut up in the press and placed the socket in position on top. Then Dan slowly turned the control on the hydraulic. He stopped turning to check the progress. It seemed to be working. So he set it up again and turned again. The second time, however, it appears that things weren’t quite straight, and the device seemed to be curling the ends rather than pushing the bearing through.
A couple more times of repositioning and re-turning only seemed to make matters worse. So Dan took the strut out, put cardboard on the sides, and placed it in a bench vise. He then took a hacksaw, removed the blade, placed the blade inside the bearing, then reattached the blade to the handle. He sawed for awhile, then took the blade out. He took a hammer and a narrow chisel and started detaching the bearing from the strut at the cut. More cutting, turning the strut and chiseling on the other side. More cutting and chiseling, back and forth for probably about 1/2 an hour. The hard part seemed to be the very center, which didn’t want to detach, or was so far away (2 inches?) that it was difficult to reach with the chisel.
Finally, there was a breakthrough. Dan carefully chiseled a bit more to get the rest to curl in, making it easier to remove, and took the old bearing out. When we looked inside, we saw a small groove where his chisel had been. Interestingly enough, there was a much larger groove where the last person had removed the bearing.
We aligned the new bearing over the hole then placed a small piece of wood on the top. Dan then hammered the new bearing in.
It’s in there tight. It’s definitely not going anywhere! But the new one is slightly longer than the old one, and sticks out about 1/2 inch. Since that doesn’t change the line, it shouldn’t make a difference.
