Trojan Boat Forum

On a recent long trip, my starboard engine overheated. After putting into a marina and renting a car to get home, the mechanic just reported that the front bearing of the raw water pump failed and the shaft "walked" forward causing the pulley to be misaligned and the belt to come off. He said that is his 35+ years working on boats he has never seen this happen.

Anyone else ever have this problem?

Yup

Pretty lucky there - an easy fix.

No easy fix - a new pump at $500 plus labor to put it in. Shafts don't normally walk anywhere unless something else has failed - in this case the front bearing.

It happens, I have been a tech my whole life, and Ive seen, Incredible failures , good thing you noticed the engine temp, that could have been worse

Well at least its a easy fix . I am surprised that your tech has not seen this before . must have been working on outboards for the last 35 years LOL

Do that type of work yourself. You can get a pump for $200.

I would love to have done it myself. Unfortunately, it happened late on Friday afternoon. Fortunately we were near a marina because we were in high winds with 4-6 foot waves on the bow. The town is quite small but has a full service marina and our vacation ended Sunday. The boat is still 315 miles from its new home and we had to rent a car to get back and arrived at 3:30am Saturday morning.

As soon as it is fixed, I plan to continue the trip to its new home. We had taken vacation surrounding the Memorial Day holiday to give us 10 days to move the boat about 625 miles to its new home. Bad weather and/or high winds caused us to only get about half way in 8 days until the overheating problem. But hey, its a new boat, we had a great time learning all about her, we love the boat, and had a great vacation.

"we love the boat, and had a great vacation"
And that, my friends, is what it is all about.....