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With season drawing to a close I was busy getting some routine maintinance tasks completed chnaging filters, oil etc... I would consider myself a pretty detailed person with procedures and processes in place for a lot of things that ghappen on the boat (log keeping, enine start up, genset start up, monitoring hours etc...) you get the idea. Prior to any engine start-up I check the belts, filters, Oil level and give it a general eye ball) only after this happens do I start up the engine. I also keep the are surrounding and underneath the engine quite clean and lay down oil absorbent mats that will quikly show if I have an oil leak etc... Well today in prepartaion to remove the starter I am attempting to figure out how to tackle it so I have the rear access panel removed which is located in the afte cabin. As I am looking around I noticed a stray nut on the floor below the engine Mmmmmm, wonder what thats for. So I take a closer look and find a bolt and another nut, well I know these wernt here before so where did thgey come from. I take a close look at the engine and evrything looks right no missing nuts or bolts that I can see. Then I take a lokk down at the shaft coupling which connects the shaft to the transmission and notice an emty hole! The coupling requires four bolts to kepp the shaft fastened to the engine, one had fallen out and a nut had fallen off the second. The remaing two bolts were finger tight and would have soon vibrated off possibly causing some major issues, collision shaft breakage, transmission etc.. Wow this really cause me to take a bit of a pause and allow this close call to sink in a bit, I was really lucky and this could have been bery bad. So from here on out I put loc tite on the bolts and re-torqued them and the coupling inspection will now be part of my regular start up procedure. Just a two minute check could make all the difference in the world when boating, this was a good lesson.
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