Broken Driveshaft

[Krushanpatel]

This weekend on our way back to marina. We heard a sudden rattle and strong vibration on the boat. Checked the clean out ports and found nothing. Upon taking it out from water we saw a huge gap between impeller and wear ring. So took the jet pump
Housing apart and found a broken shaft. My mechanic who takes care of the boat said he has never seen anything like it before. I have extended service it’s a 2020 242 SE. has anyone had any luck getting it done through warranty.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

This weekend on our way back to marina. We heard a sudden rattle and strong vibration on the boat. Checked the clean out ports and found nothing. Upon taking it out from water we saw a huge gap between impeller and wear ring. So took the jet pump
Housing apart and found a broken shaft. My mechanic who takes care of the boat said he has never seen anything like it before. I have extended service it’s a 2020 242 SE. has anyone had any luck getting it done through warranty.

If you have the extended warranty and there is no rock dings on the impeller it should be covered.

 

[Dixemon]

I agree with that as well. looks to me it separated in the threaded section of the shaft. I think I would be bitch'in about material failure, imperfections in casting ect..

 

[14SX190]

Wow.
Another broken DS.
Just saw posting of one broken

Hope it's an easy warranty claim.

 

[tdonoughue]

But I think the others were 270's weren't they? Don't recall that happening on a 242. But it is in the same place...

 

[Inthrustwetrust]

Had it happen on my 2020 AR240. Found a couple other 24ft boats that also had the problem. Fully covered under warranty, they replaced the entire pump assembly and impeller but it took close to 5 months waiting on back ordered parts. That was spring of 2021 so hopefully the parts problem is better now.

 

[Judge]

I've been following these broken shaft threads since I just purchased a '22 275SD. It is a little scary for this to happen with what should be a pretty stout piece of metal.

While I've read alignment is a theory for the failures as well as metal fatigue / defect, etc. I have to think it is a metal defect issue from the manufacturing process.

I had a 2018 GMC Canyon Denali with the 2.8L Baby Duramax. I always did the maintenance and used GM filters, etc. Back in January I was driving down the interstate pulling a snowmobile trailer doing 70MPH.... downhill mind you. All of a sudden there was a big bang. My wife and I looked at each other and thought we blew a tire. I look out the side mirror and see smoke and figure it was the tire. I get out and look at all the tires on the truck and trailer and they're all fine. The I look down and see a trail of oil in the snow. The engine grenaded at 69,000 miles.... 9000 out of warranty.

After doing some research there were several 2.8L that blew the same way between 20K - 80K miles from a wrist pin failure. An independent diesel shop did a teardown and they said it was a quality issue with the heat-treating process of the wrist pins.

Wrist-pins and driveshafts are both exposed to a lot of force. After having that wrist-pin fail, I could easily see a defect in the manufacturing process causing these driveshaft failures.

 

[GTBRMC]

Been watching these drive shaft failures. Even if impeller ding(s) are present, the shaft should not fail this way. The good news: almost certainly an easily diagnosed material failure. Whether related to heat treat or base metal (or both, though unlikely, there will be obvious physical evidence in the shaft itself. Don’t give up on getting Yamaha to fix these, this is almost certainly their issue.

 

[lowell787]

Same exact issue on my 2020 212x. The initial diagnosis from the dealer was that "everything seemed fine and you probably hit something as your impeller is dented up really badly". There was 0 effort to support initially from the dealer but they offered to charge 3 hours of labor and $480 to pull the pump and look at it.
Nope!!! Spent 10 minutes pulling the pump to see the broken driveshaft. I should have pulled it in their parking lot!!
After 8 weeks, the claim was approved by Yamaha, but now in a waiting game for driveshaft and impeller housing. Pleased that it's covered but horribly disappointed in dealer service competency and Yamaha quality and response.

 

[Judge]

I have a little information that I wanted to share that may.... or may not.... be related to these shafts breaking.... assuming it is more of an alignment issue than a quality issue with the shaft.

I bought a '22 275SD back in August that I was hoping to get in the water and docked in southwest Florida this month... but hurricane Ian had other ideas. I ended up leaving the boat in PA since my marina has heavy damage here. I haven't had the boat in the water yet and it only has 1/2 hour on it from the dealer going through a pre-delivery test.

While winterizing the boat to leave back in PA I noticed a horseshoe shaped piece of metal down in the bilge behind the starboard motor. I didn't think much of it and figured it was leftover debris from manufacturing they didn't clean up.

I had recently purchased the service manual and while thumbing through it my eyes almost popped out of my head when I saw that horseshoe piece of metal is actually a motor mount shim used to align the motor with the pump. The number of shims could vary per boat I assume.

Now there are two possibilities....

1) Someone dropped a shim during assembly and didn't bother to pick it up out of the bilge.

2) It fell out of the motor mount during assembly or the mount wasn't tightened properly and it fell out on it own.

I immediately thought about this thread and contacted my dealer after taking to @FSH 210 Sport about my find. The sales guy was going to talk to service and get back to me. But after reading about a 275, a 242 and now a 212 with another shaft breaking, there is no way I'm putting the boat in the water without the dealer checking all the motor mounts and the motor alignment after finding that shim.

Maybe these rare shaft breaks are due to shims falling out.... or maybe not..... or maybe they didn't use enough shims for proper alignment. But I would check your bilge to see if you find any shims laying around.

 

[Ronnie]

I have an unrelated timing chain failure and am insured under boat is/geico. If a chain or shaft broke due to a collision it would be covered, if it broke because of a manufacturer defect it would not be covered.

Extended warranty should cover this but as someone else stated I would be worried about part availability.

Consider calling yamaha sports plaza in Seattle. They told me there are three yamaha parts warehouses in the US and they were able to check availability and they quantity of the parts I needed when I called them in late September.

 

[Judge]

Alignment or quality issues with the shaft are both potential root causes in these cases.... both manufacturing defects.

 

[84rzv500r]

In my experience Ive had some different types of drive shaft failures over the last 6 years. (all 20mm shafts)

• splines sheared on OEM shaft (jumping wakes and unporting the Jet drive not throttling back)
• shaft structural failure just aft of the o-rings at the spline (Aftermarket stainless shaft heat treating issue, hadn't learned the throttling back lesson yet)
• shaft cracked and twisted shaft (Aftermarket stainless shaft didnt fail but runout was way out and failure was inevitable, Chinese rear bearing over heated came apart and had a hard stop after splitting a ball in two)
• shaft run out caused bad vibration from prop strike (sucked up a piece of plastic with aluminum riveted to it hard stop)
• on the 2 strokes the engine mounts would go bad (hard to tell as they shake like a hula dancer on the dash driving on a cobblestone road any way) and take out the mid bearing seals...

now i only use OEM shafts and just about to upgrade to 22mm shafts, I dont jump the boat as much now (hey we're all still 12 inside riding our stingrays) I try to only use OEM or name brand bearings, pack the bearings with water proof grease when assembling but use synthetic 80w-90 gear oil as lube...

 

[Judge]

In my experience Ive had some different types of drive shaft failures over the last 6 years. (all 20mm shafts)

• splines sheared on OEM shaft (jumping wakes and unporting the Jet drive not throttling back)
• shaft structural failure just aft of the o-rings at the spline (Aftermarket stainless shaft heat treating issue, hadn't learned the throttling back lesson yet)
• shaft cracked and twisted shaft (Aftermarket stainless shaft didnt fail but runout was way out and failure was inevitable, Chinese rear bearing over heated came apart and had a hard stop after splitting a ball in two)
• shaft run out caused bad vibration from prop strike (sucked up a piece of plastic with aluminum riveted to it hard stop)

now i only use OEM shafts and just about to upgrade to 22mm shafts, I dont jump the boat as much now (hey we're all still 12 inside riding our stingrays) I try to only use OEM or name brand bearings, pack the bearings with water proof grease when assembling but use synthetic 80w-90 gear oil as lube...r

There have been at least three OEM shafts breaking at the impeller and all on 2019+ models. Something is going on either with the shaft manufacturing process or the engine / pump alignment.

I'm leaning towards alignment given the shafts are all breaking at the impeller (could still be a metal failure) but I would think there would be signs of abnormal wear of the wear ring if the shaft out of the motor was pushing the impeller one way or the other.

 

[papadeck]

This weekend on our way back to marina. We heard a sudden rattle and strong vibration on the boat. Checked the clean out ports and found nothing. Upon taking it out from water we saw a huge gap between impeller and wear ring. So took the jet pump
Housing apart and found a broken shaft. My mechanic who takes care of the boat said he has never seen anything like it before. I have extended service it’s a 2020 242 SE. has anyone had any luck getting it done through warranty.

The way it appears to have broken clean suggests to me that it was a brittle metal failure. This occurs when a part is heat treated improperly.i.e. its hardened, but then not annealed to achieve a particular hardness to optimize wear, stiffness without breaking. There is another issue that can cause failure like this called hydrogen embrittlement. This occurs in parts that have been plated, chrome, cadmium etc. , but I don't think these parts are plated, so I would rule this out. The culprit IMHO is heat treatment.

 

[84rzv500r]

There have been at least three OEM shafts breaking at the impeller and all on 2019+ models. Something is going on either with the shaft manufacturing process or the engine / pump alignment.

I'm leaning towards alignment given the shafts are all breaking at the impeller (could still be a metal failure) but I would think there would be signs of abnormal wear of the wear ring if the shaft out of the motor was pushing the impeller one way or the other.

yes this is a new failure mode for sure... "thats the big end" I am in agreement with the mfg process and the wear ring... either the hardening of the shaft or the machining of the threads. I expect that if the shaft was grossly misaligned you would get more bearing failures however it could be causing stress to concentrate in the area as I have seen the breaks in the shaft are near where the end of the spline coupler is or now where the impeller threads are... tho looking at the fracture id sure like to see what comes out of the bearing housing...

 

[84rzv500r]

it looka like a failure in torsion... after this I started painting a line on and inspecting regularly... LOL

 

[84rzv500r]

I cant find the other pictures of shaft failures however I think I saved some of the broken shafts in a box so that i could make a tool to get the couplers apart from the flanges easier... I'll look next time I'm out to the Junk pile..

 

[Judge]

it looka like a failure in torsion... after this I started painting a line on and inspecting regularly... LOL
View attachment 190795View attachment 190796

Wow! That is some serious twisting!

 

[Judge]

The way it appears to have broken clean suggests to me that it was a brittle metal failure. This occurs when a part is heat treated improperly.i.e. its hardened, but then not annealed to achieve a particular hardness to optimize wear, stiffness without breaking. There is another issue that can cause failure like this called hydrogen embrittlement. This occurs in parts that have been plated, chrome, cadmium etc. , but I don't think these parts are plated, so I would rule this out. The culprit IMHO is heat treatment.

I could see it being the heat treatment process.