DriveShaft Boot Question...

[JBoss]

Hi all,
Newbie here, just bought a 1996 Speedster as my first boat. Before I bought the boat I did insist on a test ride, and it performed very well. Man these things are fast!

I’ve been going through the boat a little each day this week cleaning and checking things over and today I took the driveshaft covers off and noticed the driveshaft boots seem to have a bit of a bulge to them. The rubber feels good, nice and firm, but not hard, with a little bit of give if you really press on them.

I want to say that in the pictures I’ve seen in other topics they’re supposed to be pretty flat coming off the flywheel before tapering down to the driveshaft?

I attempted to slide them up the flywheel closer to the grease fitting by releasing the clamp and wiggling it, but it didn’t want to move and I didn’t want to tear them by trying to grab them with a tool.

I’ll attach some pictures. How do you guys think they look?

Thanks in advance for everyone’s help!

 

[mikidymac]

They appear to be fine but it looks like someone pumped too much grease into them. You might want to remove the grease zerk and see if there is just too much grease in them. You only want to pump enough grease into them so that the driveshaft just stops moving towards the back of the ski and no more. Typically one or two pumps per season is all that is needed.