DAMPER THOSE REPAIRS

Ed Sherman’s article on saildrives reminded me of one of the convenient aspects of the traditional propulsion system. I had the damper plate fail in my Westerbeke 100 diesel. There was no problem uncoupling things and moving the drive shaft back enough to remove the transmission and replace the damper plate. A friend with a saildrive had to move the entire engine to get to the damper plate. My project was about 20 minutes to get to the plate and replace it. His project was about three days and a lot of labor in a restricted space to do the same job. Along with the corrosion considerations, working on a saildrive can be a problem. C. Henry Depew

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