1 wire was wrong, couldn't see it, wouldn't have believed it.
i got walked thru the wires, now she starts
new fuel pump and petronix module will be here tuesday

That's excellent!

That's a really nice project. Great work!

Ram air, (big improvement over factory blower hose that the foam crushed)

New fuel pump on, new petronix ignition module installed, cap rotor wires sitting here waiting. carb is pouring gas down the primaries, with good advice and coaching, i ordered 2 floats extra gaskets and some other stuff on the way, carb rebuild kit is sitting here too. Maybe by end of the week it'll run right, the stuff should be here any day.

meantime over the last 2 days i got shaft and coupler aligned pretty good. Had to grind the hull over the strut flat to get the bolts plumb, brushed on some gel and used a plate.
The shaft is within 1/16 inline with the boat centerline and the coupler is down to .0025.
strut is bedded all looks good. Believe there is acceptable tolerances between the prop strut and hull
At least 1 more double check on the coupler before the stern tube gets bedded and glassed, that should be a breeze with the dual taper shaft

You Tube

by some miracle i actually wrapped 1708 vertical and horizontal twice overlapping in front and under the tube.
Got 2 layers laid like shingles front to back and 2 layers back to front with a cap over mostly the back.

I see the round brass splined shaft inside the fiberglass tube and the prop shaft looks smooth and must go through the brass splined tube? How does that all seal up from water coming in?

Just curious

i asked on the ski boat website about leaving the tube on and general concensus was cut it off flush.
Next thing was about the last 2 pictures;
second last picture the tube can be tapered to meet the hull and then glassed,
last picture barrel sand it open all the way up to the hull and glass it.
The more i think about it that sounds better in that it would have glass on both sides.
plus i'm not sure about the shaft seal getting water if the front wasn't opened up with the barrel sander.

any opinions on the glass and shape.

the brass that you see is the old cutass bearing, it's a brass tube with a gooved rubber insert that goes in the strut and is water cooled. (Zoom in on the first pic in post 158, you can see the new 2 piece cutlass in the strut)

i put the old cutlass in to center the tube around the shaft while the tube got glassed in place so the packing gland (rope seal) is alined on the shaft so it doesn't wear out. The rope seal if too tight or misaligned can groove the shaft. The bearing doesn't stay in that tube.


This is the packing gland/shaft seal, it's water cooled and by design drips once every 3-5 seconds.

Roger that, I understand now thanks!