How do you know if a strut is bent??

[Tribal 20]

I chewed up a prop the the day and replaced it with an acme 1433. It seems to be a much better prop than the OJ that was damaged. Everything seems fine. No vibrations,etc. the supra dealer said my strut was bent about 3 degrees. Does anyone know if that should make a big difference (again, the boat drives great. Thanks.

[CornRickey]

I would think 3 degrees would be noticable. I'd ask them how the check it since nothing is flat or straight.

[chris young]

It'd not hard to measure if you have access to a dial gauge, check this out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_w0LvD6gEc

I'm with CornRickey on this one though, 3 deg is a lot. I have one of these http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?p=67350&cat=1,43513 and as long as there was enough space between the strut and the prop, or the prop was removed, it would work, but it's the wrong tool for the job, and the tolerances for a straight shaft are generally in thousands of an inch, not degrees.

The more I think of it 3 deg is huge, are you sure they didn't say 3 thou?

[chris young]

Oops, I didn't read the original post correctly, you say the strut is bent 3 degrees not the shaft. My bad. In that case it should have messed up your shaft alignment and the link in my post above would still be applicable, but now you'd be looking at the shaft alignment bit and not how to measure if it's out of true. That you can do with just a set of feeler gauges, no dial gauge required.

That being said, 3 degrees is pretty obvious, and you should be able to check it yourself under the boat with a square, a level and a tape measure.

Good luck