Wonderful dreary, drizzly, rainy, ducky kind of day, so about daylight I head out from the boat ramp to back side of one of my local public puddles to see what kind of outlook this weekend may have.

Motor ran like a dream through the "clean water", then I get into the stump mine field and slowed down to a mild crawl... almost to the back end and the boat speed drops to almost nothing, even though throttle speed has not changed - what the...

Lift the prop out of the water - prop is turning... drop it back in the water and notice almost no water movement from under the cavitation plate... prop out of water again, and prop is turning... what the...
Shut the engine off and get out to inspect - I find that the set screw and key are missing from the engine shaft U joint yoke, and the tack welds I had put on the yoke to shaft had broken loose, letting the shaft just spin in the yoke when resistance was applied...

Ok, now what am I going to do - nobody but me out here on a day like this, and most everyone I know with something that would get back here is at work... Digging around in the boat, I found a few 1/4 and 5/16" bolts... Dang! the set screw in the yoke is a 3/8", but wait ... I can drive this 1/4" bolt in the keyway and maybe limp back - Done... Crank engine, put prop in water at idle speed and on the way I am ... for 75 feet...

So I start poling back towards the boat ramp, about 2 1/2 miles away. During 10 minutes of poling I was thinking where could I "borrow" a 3/8 set screw and I thought of the bolts holding the engine base to the motor frame - too long I'm sure, but may work...

Well, to finish a long story, this is how I managed to limp back to the boat ramp at an idle - No Duct tape, and no bailing wire...103013 ujoint temp fix 2.jpg

That is why go-devil uses tie wire on the set-screws.

Sucks to be in that position but you McGyver'd your way out of it! AWESOME! I have had to do the same. That's why I like to run a longtail.....simple and easy to fix in the field.

I use lock tight on both my keyway and my set screw.

Happened to me twenty years ago with my 18 HP GD on a camping trip up a river here...wedged some sardine can "keys" in the keyway on the shaft and that bound enough to putt back to the landing. Unfortunately, when you shear a prop like I did five years ago, I had to pole the 3 miles back...slept good that night.

Glades, I had lost a shaft/prop several years ago too... started keeping a trolling motor in the boat for "emergencies" and never needed it since, until now - the part that sucks is when I had the transom mod and hunt deck installed back in August/September, I had stripped the hull and ended up not putting the trolling motor back in - giving me a little more hull room and trying to cut weight down...

OlSchool - the new set screw will have safety wire through it - I will also keep spare set screws and key stock in the drybox from now on, just in case...

I've got a little Plano box full of nuts, bolts, key stock, tie wire etc just for this type of occasion. I've got good set screws safety wired AND, top and bottom yokes are tacked in two spots. I hate being stranded lol

Rule #1 - Never go anywhere without duct tape.

Rule #2 - Refer to rule #1.