Velvet drive repair

[Jimmy]

Well, throttled up the 11 meter two weekends ago, and was just about on plane when the port engine decided to rev up really high. Dropped both throttles, and did the put each engine in gear, and found the port drive had no thrust. Engine ran fine, opened the hatch to take a peak. Heard a scraping sound coming from reducer, and no power from it. So.... pulled out drive that next day, ripper her down and found the teeth from my stationary gear stripped all the gears on ring gear. Only about 1/4” of engagement so... not surprised given the load it has on it, plus it is 30 years old..long story short, spoke to an expert on these drives, he said he sees this failure quite often, and suggested I do what he does.... weld it together. Hmmmm. He said he has rebuilt dozens of these over the years, never had one fail. I was concered about stress, hardness etc. said never had an issue. So, rather than $1,000 for parts. I welded it up (mig) put it back in, and it passed the stress test. Total cost of repair (minus sore back and bleeding knuckle) $35.00.

Totally tore down the entire tranny to make sure no crud made it to pump or other gears. And cleaned out cooler lines, and magnet. Rest of drive looked pristine with no wear or damage. Easy and inexpensive fix. If you understand that water runs downhill, you can rebuild these drives. Just need man sized snap ring pliars.

[prowlersfish]

New one on me glad it worked out for you .