Drive shaft shield important or not ?
 

I just took the Bam tranny out of my boat and I'm installing a drive shaft so I don't have to relocate my engine . I know in OPA and racing that drive shaft shields are required but how important are they ? Has anyone had a driveshaft/driveline failure cause damage or propel debris .
It's not an issue if I need to build one for it but I really didn't want the obstruction in the bay preventing me from cleaning and servicing the shaft and bearings . with no shield it would be so easy to just reach down and do a quick bearing check before I go out .
Now if an overwhelming amount think yes that I have to have one and that the shield is not precautionary overkill then I will get one in the immediately ..

Also the BAM 1350 is for sale if anyone needs it .

its not so much the odstruction id be worried about. from my experiance with them i like them! they keep the u-joint grease from flying in your bilge!!!

p.s please use classifieds for advertising your tranny for sale:party-smiley-004:

I didn't think about the grease slinging !
Funny Tim ! It is in the classifieds I just figured I would throw it out there !

you would be pissed wiping grease off the girls on the inside of your hatch!!! unless it was white grease then they would have a pearl necklass

Joe,
I'd say very important. Anything that touches the shaft will wrap around it. Mine just has covers on the differentials at each end. Almost resulted in my boat sinking once. Blower ventilation tube fell on to it while running and the wire wrapped around the shaft and whipped against everything. It cut the incoming water line to the point where water was seeping through it. One more little cut and I would have had a bunch of water in the boat if not sunk. It beat one of the teague sea strainers and fittings so bad I had to replace them. Not to mention all the gel and nice bilge paint beaten up. Trim lines needed to be replaced, etc... Plastic from the hose nearly completely blocked the air intake of the whipples. Still to this day I find wire pieces from the reinforcement.
A rag, rope, anything can get around it and the least it will do is make a mess. Strong vote to take the time to rig it with the shield.

Yea if anything makes a mess on my girls I'de be pi$sed !

Bam 1350
 

I thought the purpose of a transmission was to protect the outdrive in high HP applications?

Yes joe they are a must! I have seen a boat with the new 1350s and it snapped a driveshaft
And if there was no cover it would have messed a lot more up then just the cover.

I treated a guy who shattered his jaw when a drive line broke loose and hit him. It was ugly!

Please tell more of this story . How was his face even near the driveline while running

It was a farm accident not boat sorry for not being clear. He was working on an irrigation pump when a U joint broke. The shaft hit him and shattered his jaw. I've respected any PTO or drive line anywhere since then.

fixx
 

Vary important..what if the trans or drive were to lock up at any givin moment?? the drive shaft would be the first to go and ask me how i know... well ill tell you a little story and its not about boating..I worked on a friends nmca nastalge pro street car at the track,,we would go out of town to certain nmca race tracks well theis one weekend we had a race in North Carolina..my friends girlfriend drove the seven second camero,,this car had 2 drive shaft safety loops and the car was a fresh build from skinny kid race cars..anyways barb made her run and as soon and she threw the shoots the driveshaft literly exploaded on a decel rite after she threw the parachute's and the rear section of the driveshaft went through the floodboard and wraped its self around her arm literly like a cork screw..needless to say after the accident picture 4'' above her elbow down to about midway of her forarm was crushed and that part hav to be rebuild,,she totally lose her elbo and 20 some surguries later she can use her arm but barely..
So fore safety reasons install the driveshaft shield..it could be someone you care about that gets hurt over a piece of metal that taked 15 min to take off to access the zurt fitting to greace..

If there is no disadvantage to having a driveshaft, why are boat builders spending ~$6000 for a bam super cyborg transmission? Seriously, I do not know why there is a market for transmissions if a driveshaft (with shield) would do. Someone here on OSO must know why transmissions are used...

I just paid Hubar ~$2000 to rebuild 2 Bams...

Rick

Transmission is needed for neutral and reverse on speedmaster, and trs drives that have no internal shifting. Driveshaft just transmits the power. 2 different applications. Joe is removing a Konrad and putting a bravo style drive on his boat

Oh... I have merc 6s. Always thought I was shifting outdrive not trans! Come to think of it, trans had a cable attached to shift lever on trans. Lol! I thought clutches in trans were to protect outdrive - at least one person told me that.

now if you had an outdrive that didn't require a tranny for the shift but you wanted drive to motor protection you would go with crash boxes ..

Not true, a crash boxes is used in place of a trany because it robs less power then a trany. serves the same purpose as a trany but you can not shift a crash boxes when the motor is running. Never use in a single app. unless you want to beat the hell out of your boat at the docks, really only used in race app. But back to your original question is a Drive shaft shield important ? They call it a scatter shield for a reason lol!

We slung a driveshaft at 160 once, let me tell you that was a whole lot of beating around (in the enclosure) untill that boat slowed down.
Yes, put a guard

I vote yes - intall one.

This is my turbine powered Warlock sitting on the bottom after the forward universal joint let go at 120 without any drive shaft restraints. The drive shaft, still connected to the prop beat the hell out of the center pod. The really dumb part is the shaft guards were sitting on the shelf. I had just not found time to install them.

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...arlock/W-7.jpg

I was lucky a buddy was close and we got it to shore before it went down.

LT

Due to the overwhelming amount of people that strongly suggest it and the failure stories I went to my metal supplier and bought a sweet piece of aluminum round tube that is 1/2" thick .
I'm gonna build a clam shell shield , powder coat it black and ball mill Superboat Racing in it if I can see it when it's back in the boat ...Did the mockup last night and the front universal is in the bell housing and the back one is in the extension box so you can't see to much of the drive shaft

Good job. You should have them for sure.

Forgot about this post . Thought I would chime back in just to make everyone feel all warm and fuzzy and make sure ya'll were sleeping at night. Lol! Built the shield, looks cool, a lot of fun to build and can be taken off fairly easy. Thanks for the input! [ATTACH=CONFIG]511517[/ATTACH]