More stuffing box

Today wasn't too bad, except that it was hot in the high 80s.



Since I couldn't get down to where I could see the flax in the nut, I had to take a picture. This is how it looked.

I went ahead and took it out. I have a set of picks I had around the house.

Everything seemed to come out pretty easy.

I then used the picks to clean out the threads in the nut to make sure nothing was left behind. I then took a wire brush to clean up the threads on the stuffing box and nuts. I was able to move them by hand. Personally, I think they look pretty good.

After cleaning the threads, I took some 400 grit sandpaper I had sitting in the boat and used it to clean part of the shaft very lightly where it looked white, like it was starting to oxidize, or maybe it was just salt collected. It cleaned up nicely.

Here you can see the white band on the shaft.

Now, I need to order flax to repack the nut. At first, I measured it at 1/4" but when I was looking at the flax closer, I remeasured and it looked to be closer to 3/16". 3/16" might be from wear. Looking at comments on the owners group, the flax should be 1/4".

Looking at West Marine, I could go with either this white Teflon type or this black GTU type.

The only other thing I did was to remove this mirror that was mounted to the door for the head. I've ran into it several times with the knobs scraping across my back so it had to go.