jreddington
Member III
I'm doing a little research on a failure that I came across. Not an Ericson but hopefully worthy of discussion by this educated forum (a little suck up never hurts ).
Has anyone on this board ever experienced a catastrophic failure of their "traditional" stuffing box (wax impregnated flax)? Not just wear and an increased drip rate but a rapid increase of water flow beyond what a "convenience" small capacity bilge pump would hande.
The scenarios I could think of are possibly the lock nut coming loose, the packing nut then backing off and the packing blowing out. But in the boat this happened to they found it low in the water. The yard replaced the packing but didn't mention anything like a failure of the nut.
Of the five packing rings, two are modestly worn but generally intact, the third is damaged and the 4th and 5th are torn up but that may be a result of removal.
Has anyone on this board ever experienced a catastrophic failure of their "traditional" stuffing box (wax impregnated flax)? Not just wear and an increased drip rate but a rapid increase of water flow beyond what a "convenience" small capacity bilge pump would hande.
The scenarios I could think of are possibly the lock nut coming loose, the packing nut then backing off and the packing blowing out. But in the boat this happened to they found it low in the water. The yard replaced the packing but didn't mention anything like a failure of the nut.
Of the five packing rings, two are modestly worn but generally intact, the third is damaged and the 4th and 5th are torn up but that may be a result of removal.