I know this is a sail forum, I also know there's a few ex RAN. So I've bought what I concluded is 4002 one of the 1963s built in tas. The GM is in good nick and not totally foreign to me. The stern gland on the other hand ? Could be the normal packing with a different adjustment, the blue line that feeds water from the raw water pump, appears to be over kill. Or am I miss something ?

Blue water line looks ok, but I would be taking a very close look at the stern tube given the condition go the box block.
Sorry

That stern gland is identical to the one my old fishing boat had. It was a converted army/navy 40 foot work boat. I never had the water pipe there, there is no need because the bronze tube is always full of water. I did have a greaser there though. It was a small screw type arrangement I removed and replaced with a hose to a grease gun in the engine room near the battery box. After a days work I would shut down the engine usually in the engine room, turn off the batteries and give the grease gun a couple of pumps. I used Teflon packing in my gland and the grease which is pretty much unnecessary was just to slow the water drips. You will need a large U shaped spanner to adjust the stern glad nut and locking nut. The packing was 10mm if I recall correctly and there was 4 rows. The gland is just the normal tapered arrangement.

Cheers Ramona, I reckoned one of you blokes would be familiar with the set up. I've since found the water injection is blocked off because it was was blowing the grease out and running the Bilge pump more or less continuously. 6 pumps of the grease gun stops the dribble at the end of day. Luckily access is superb. many thanks out of interest do you know which AWB was your fishing boat ?

Never could work out what the number was. Vigilante down the bottom of this page was was mine. Built by General Motors Holden. After the war was fitted with a Gardiner. The Sydney built work boats had Grey motors, the Victorian ones had Gardiners.

www.boatregister.net/WW2_ArmyWorkBoats.html

Interestingly enough there's one of the WW2 hulls set up as a cruiser in the Clarence at present. Mine is a baby at only 58yr old and more surprisingly amsa has grandfathered her as she has had a continuous certificate of operation

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lydia said..
Blue water line looks ok, but I would be taking a very close look at the stern tube given the condition go the box block.
Sorry

Thanks Lydia, the rot that's in the end grain of the box block is only end grain for say max 1/2" it is a handsome lump of jarra. It's the sort of thing i can do

That flange for the stern gland is screwed on to the bronze stern tube and is held in place by 4 bronze coach bolts screwed into the end grain jarra. There is a gasket there and it all appears to be dry. What happens after a few years is the threads in the end grain timber wear and those bolts work loose. It's a simple repair job done one bolt at a time using a reinforced body filler to created new threads. Keeping the engine shaft alignment spot on helps delay the problem.

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woko said..

lydia said..
Blue water line looks ok, but I would be taking a very close look at the stern tube given the condition go the box block.
Sorry

Thanks Lydia, the rot that's in the end grain of the box block is only end grain for say max 1/2" it is a handsome lump of jarra. It's the sort of thing i can do

No problem, I did the new stern tube on Defiance with a GRP tube as the old one was just that, old with a leak.
I drove myself crazy trying to find a leak and the water was coming out metres from where it was coming in.

Thanks again, I will be keeping an eye on the the flange bolts and bring that job into the soon to do list, the cutlass bearing has a little play occasionally you can feel it when in the aft, the alignment appears good. The PO replaced the 671 that had a piston on the outside of the crankcase with a nice tight 471, MORE than enough power for students to learn the fine art of harnessing prop walk, the way I see it the final drive mechanism is the focus of torment.

ps while cleaning the bilges I can't praise the ozito wet vac enough, it has sucked up some 1st class bilge horrors !

I spent many a pleasant few hours driving AWBs around Sydney harbour when I was at WATERHEN and PLATYPUS. I was lucky enough to be able to just go whenever I liked and was free to leave the office. Often took the kids cruising on weekends.
I did put one on the mud at Searles monument on the Parramatta river with the kids onboard. Embarrassing!

My most embarrassing time at Waterhen was doing a cold move with two patrol boats lashed alongside. I moved them out into the bay so the inside boat could leave. Bit of Westerly blowing and I needed to alter course slightly. I put the helm hard over and gave it full throttle and snapped the steering cable. Drifted about a bit till the dive boat came along and towed us all in.

I have my ticket for one of those. First learnt as a JR but got a formal ticket in Sydney. The old three arm job, one for the helm, one for revs and one for the big old gear lever. Used to take them out fishing at Sow and Pigs in Sydney. The yacht club I am with used to have an old timber cray boat as the start boat. It was just like the 40'er and I loved to drive it. Big and predictable. I could put it wherever I wanted but others struggled, they used to fight the pro-walk and come in too fast and bang it up. Come in slow on an angle, wheel over and lay it alongside step off and tie it up. Then they got an aluminium job with twin outboards, any puff of wind and it was off, I struggled and left them to it!

Good to hear the yarns about the old work boats today on close inspection of the box block it appears that in place of bronze coach bolts, mortises have been cut above and alow the tube with bronze bar inserted as a backing plate and bolted through. So a bit of epoxy bog art in the end grain, a lick of tar and good as new

Stern gland packing ..... when it was pulled down 10mm was too small, the biggest I could get locally was 12mm, even then with a ring of packing cut to fit around the shaft it flopped into the packing nut with say a 10mm gap, and four rings went in as four came out. After 6 hrs of work and 2weeks of being in the water, I nipped the nut up to stem the flow from constant run to constant drip/ dribble. Then things started to heat up, I could hold my hand on the nut and stern tube it was warm, the constant dribble was a nice shower temp with some steam. I doused the assembly with water and backed the nut off increasing the flow to piddle, I'm assuming that the packing is still polishing the new bit of shaft and things will cool after a few more hours