B.O.A.T. - propeller shaft
 

Anyone have any idea how this could happen? Don't think I hit anything, didn't have any weird vibrations before. Just cruising along and a loud bang. :banghead:


Doesn't appear that anything is bent at all.

You mean the prop along with the part of the shaft came clean off? Whoa...

Past impact + fatigue or bad shaft + fatigue.

I had a similar occurrence with a rudder.

looking at the picture it looks like your shaft is way out of alignment
see how it is way over to the left side of the strut
Harmonics can build up from a shaft that is WAY out of alignment and break the shaft

Camera angle distortion might be misleading, but the cutlass bearing confirms the misalignment. Look at how it is compressed on the left side and not on the right.

I'm thinking we hit a little something earlier in the day, enough to throw it out of alignment, and a little hard running on it eventually made it break off.

Hope this doesn't take forever to get fixed.

yep that will do it

This happened on my friends Epic..twice! The shaft was out of alignment at the transmission which caused it to wobble weird or something and over time it snapped the shaft off in the transmission. The second time was at Lake Powell and we were in 200' of water and the boat just started filling up. Luckily the Epic's have dual rudders and the prop got lodged against the rudders and he was able to dive in and put the shaft back in place and tie it there and keep the boat from sinking. Hard to believe that anything could snap one of those shafts but it happens.

Get the alignment fixed or it will happen again.

I had the same thing happen... When I bought the boat no signs, but the previous owner hit something, there was just enough fatigue that the shaft was in a small bind and it finally sheered off...LUCKILY mine did it above the shaft strut, and I didnt loose my prop, because when it slid back the prop hit the Rudder and it was still hanging in the shaft strut