Thanks for the inquiry Bob. Tom, hopefully the rebuilt knee will work better than the original equipment.

To make a long story longer, here’s what happened to the AF motors. I was getting a screeching sound from the boat that led me to believe that a bearing was bad. It was the left side since the back pressure from the rudder always reduced that side’s RPM and it was easy to tell that the left side was the culprit. I sent both motors off to AF to get the rear and front bearings replaced just to keep everything in balance. When I got them back, the brush screws in one of them were stripped beyond use but the threads in the brush holders were still pristine. Someone there must have picked up a crappy set of screws from somewhere and replaced the ones that I was using. It took a while to get the replacement screws and I reinstalled the motors. I got both motors all set up with the couplers and dog bones and started to apply some battery power to each one. I could not believe what I was seeing. One of them was turning in the opposite direction! It had been reassembled wrong. Back to AF it went for another two week round trip. I got it back and finally had everything right. I took the Corvette out to the lake and low and behold the same noise was coming from the left side. It was not the bearings. It had to be the oillite bushings in the stuffing box or the strut. I tried to remove the left shaft but it would not move rearward. It rotated all right but not backward. I did get it out eventually and saw that the rear bushing in the strut had made some deep gouges in the prop shaft. The right one was not bad. I’m going to try to replace the strut and get a good alignment with the stuffing box so that I won’t have to dig out the box. I already did damage the plywood strut mount. I’m not too sure how this is going to work out.

On a lighter note, my wife and I had a great time on the aircraft carrier Midway in San Diego. They really let you see a great deal of the ship. If you are nearby be sure to take it in. That picture of the two of us was taken in the bridge. What a great view the captain had of the whole thing. Dan.

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<font size="3">Dan,

What a head ache that strut has turned out ot be!  I hope the new strut just happens to be "just right" so not further damage is done to the Corvette during replacement.  This will be an on going story.  With your bad strut and Tom's knee rebuild the boat and Tom may end up ready to go at the same time.

Bob</font><br type="_moz"/>

Bob, It's not just Tom's knee and the Corvette, I'm having all sorts of problems with RCU. That's why you see all those "deleted". Dan.

<font size="3">Dan,

Seems there's problems with <u>all</u> the forums I have visited here on RCU. []</font>  <font size="3">And I thought this one was doing so well I complemented it on another forum because of the relatively fast load times of the postings.  The other forum took any where from 50 to 75 seconds to load new post and adding a picture was even longer to have it posted.  Humm, wonder what the problem could be??

</font><font size="3">Bob</font>

Thanks Dan.

I want to visit the Midway, as well as the San Diego Maritime Museum. I also want to visit the USS Iowa and SS Lane Victory in San Pedro. I have been to the Los Angeles Maritime Museum, and it is fantastic!

Shame on me, I didn't say anything about the Midway picture, good picture of her port side. And a very nice picture of the bridge!

Tom, you enter the Midway on the hanger deck. It's several sets of ladders up to the bridge and another few down to the decks below. After you go up or down, it's back down or up. The reasons they are called ladders and not stairs is because they are a b*tch to negotiate. You better wait until you have a good set of knees.

I removed the original strut by first removing the screws and then good old brute force to pop off the strut. Actually a number 18 X-acto chisel blade was used. You may remember that the strut was bonded on with Gorilla glue. I did not use epoxy for just this scenario. You can see how far off the new strut is from the old one. The screw mounting holes were also off quite a bit. A second new strut was no better. A mixture of Z-poxy Finishing Resin and Sig micro balloons was used to make up the difference and I used one of the shafts to find the correct location of the strut for minimum resistance and hold it in position until the mixture cured. You can see that I made sure there was an epoxy puddle over the screw holes to act as a screw head since I could not use screws as before. This cured and the resistance on the shaft was still very low. Some primer and then paint and that’s where it is now.

Very good looking repair job Dan.

Tom, any thoughts about the epoxy only attachment? I'll find out the practical way eventually. Dan.

Mr Moderator, tell the computer guys that AVG blocked my access to the home page and classified because of HTML/Framer for the past few days. Dan.
RCU2 | 72.87.183.74 | 42514 | 1 | 10:08:15 AM EST | YC

see http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_11219665/tm.htm

Looks like its only those people using AVG that are having problems. My work PC uses AVG, but home my computers use Panda IS and don't seem to have an issue with it. Go figure...

We are all having that problem Dan.

A good epoxy glue joint should be fine in my opinion.

Got it. I'll be ready to go again as soon as I get a prop from Dumas. I'm changing the diameter from 1 3/4 to 1 1/2 to see if it will extend the run time and improve performance. It should be here next week. Dan.

Hi Dan, that's horrible to hear about your motors...I think that with the prices they charge they should be ashamed..I am in the same boat as you so hopefully the results are better. A few years ago before they discontinued the Astroflight Super Ferrite 25 I bought a pair brand new for the Dauntless. I just took them out of their original boxes first time a week ago and put them inmy boat. It was then that I found that one of the motors were defective. When I put power to it nothing happens but when I turn the shaft by hand it suddenly comes to life.. So I sent it to Astroflight on Friday for servicing. I hope these guys put care into the motor because the results will be posted online. In my book it is already a strike that they weren't careful when servicing your motor.

-Rich.

It's also a shame that they don't sell parts for their older motors. There are still so many Astro Super Ferrite 25-40's in working order and they should accomodate simple things like those plastic screws especially because they do strip so easily.

On another note to bobs point, this forum is so much faster than the Dauntless one.

-Rich.

Rich and all, I still can't get to the RCU home page. I can't get to it through this forum also. If they loose my sign in, I'll disappear until they can get rid of this HTML Framer thing. I've been trying to get in touch with AVG but they are always backed up. Dan.

Try this:

Click on RCU page, such as Reviews. (I have done this one myself).

When you get the AVG warning box, simply acknowledge it, by clicking on the close button on the box.

Now, continue surfing the page.

When you click another link, such as a photo, you will get the AVG warning again. Again, close the box and try to surf the RCU page you clicked onto.

It is annoying as hell, but you can get through at least a little bit.

This is with Chrome as my browser. No clue how IE acts.

Tom, I can get to a few pages but not all. RCU says to check my POP-U or something like that. Dan.

Yeah, it's a pain I know. Well bottom line, RCU is currently FUBAR and no one in the seat of power seems to be doing anything about it.

At work with Win 2K Pro and MS Internet Explorer I now only see the warning message from AVG. There is nothing behind it. Closing the box leaves me with a blank window.

At home I can use Win Xp Pro and IE or Firefox with no problem and using Panda IS 2012 antivirus, not, AVG.