Carver Owners Forum

Recent quote from Mechanic to replace stuffing box flax material quote 1000.00 because of in accessibility of stuffing boxes. Propeller and shafts have to be removed the motor mounts loosened and engine to be raised to service stuffing boxes. Please advise on the accuracy of this quote. Thank you!,

Unlikely. Can you post a picture of the stuffing box area? A pic is worth - a thousand...

The boat has V drives. I can see them being hard to get to, but not where you'd have to remove the shafts and loosen the engines.

Well, I had an 83 28' mariner with the v drives mentioned above and replaced the packing.....now it is a miserable job which includes mirrors etc and working with one hand thru the cabinet on one side , but I have to say an experienced tech should not need 10 hours for that job, and there was no moving engine mounts etc....so that being said maybe the 81 is different, but that is my two cents......

Those are terrible to work on because of the V Drives but it is totally doable without all that dismantling. Haven't had to go through that much work yet to replace packing. It's tight and I don't envy the poor guy that will be tasked with it but he'll live!

Seems high to me, if you can see the stuffing boxes and put your hand on them u should be able to remove and re-stuff them. Are they leaking a lot? If you can put up with a small dripping you should be fine, have you tried just tighting them a little or are you out of threads? The right side motor will most likely be left hand threaded. Picture would b great. If one has to raise motor mounts and remove shafts, etc, then re-alignment needs to be done. Shop around and find another mechanic.
Mike

I would get several quotes. It seems very high for someone that would know how to do it