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Greasing up for winter
Just wondering,
What is everyone's thoughts about putting boats away for the winter? (Yea, it's getting close the ponds and such are going to freeze over here in MI) I'm wondering about the shafts, should we just clean them off till the first run in spring. My thinking, clean them off and leave them be till spring (grease may gum up and get stiff over the winter) which makes it just more work in the spring cleaning and polishing as well maybe replacing tef tubes.
John
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Better to oil up for winter :biggrin:
Best method I've found is to clean the gunk out of the liner with a soft pipe cleaner. Clean the flex shaft with some lighter fluid or rubbing alcohol add a few drops of light oil and reinsert the shaft keeping the collet just tight enough to keep the shaft in place.
If you do get a bit of rust on the shaft after storage you can easily remove it with some fine steel wool.
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Do not store the flex cable in the stuffing tube. Wipe it off, oil it if you want, and place it inside the hull.
Damaging rust can easily form on the inside of the cable where it cannot be removed. Keep the cable dry except when in use. I have cables I’ve raced for years which are still running strong.
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Good to know this. I'll be storing my shafts in the hull from now on.
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for any guys that run in salt water, its great to store your shafts in a made up pvc plumbing pipe of say 2 inch diameter by whatever length and cap one end , fill up with Kerosene or diesel fuel and leave your shafts in this pipe as long as needed. oh make sure you make this so it doesn,t fall over.
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Fresh water only here, just going to pull shafts, Teflon tubes, clean them up and free them up of grease and leave them out in the air for the winter.
Already had a few inch's of snow today and in the 20's the rest of the week (lovely) Some of the ponds had a skim of ice on them already here.