Dripless seal water supply question

[kennyk69]

While winterizing my 2009 340 CAT Indmar I realized that the water supply line to the shaft packing is delivered from the port side exhaust manifold.

I find it odd, actually wrong, that the dripless seal is fed scalding hot water from the exhaust mani versus cooler water from almost any other cooling line.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Anyone do a re route? Does the dripless packing benefit from the uber hot water in some way?!?!?!

[NoWake]

I believe the water supply should come from the transmission cooler. That is how it is in my direct drives.

[docdrs]

Wow , you are lucky if your dripless is still dripless, I restyled with this issue on my 2009 and it wasn't until I re routed it from the tranny cooler did I have a dripless seal. The hot water caused expansion of the housing and leakage around the seal and housing not the seal itself. Once I re routed the cool water or rather lack of hot water kept the housing from expanding and the leaking stopped. It's an easy reroute

[kennyk69]

Wow , you are lucky if your dripless is still dripless, I restyled with this issue on my 2009 and it wasn't until I re routed it from the tranny cooler did I have a dripless seal. The hot water caused expansion of the housing and leakage around the seal and housing not the seal itself. Once I re routed the cool water or rather lack of hot water kept the housing from expanding and the leaking stopped. It's an easy reroute


This is what I figured.........I'm not so sure that the seal is "dripless", but it's hard to differentiate the water we drag in from the lake versus the water coming in through the prop shaft seal. Assuming it is leaking it's not leaking enough to cause me alarm (yet).

I'm going to make a point to re route this over the winter. Thanks, Ken