Dripless shaft seal maint.

My boat is in the same situation and about the same hrs and time. Spends every winter in heated storage. I installed dripless in 2003 when I had some major repairs completed. They're still running. However I have them on this winters inspection list with the yard as I am thinking the bellows might be due.

Response from Tides is that storage won't cause the seals to stick, but overheating will.

What is your preferred brand of dripless shaft seal, assuming they are the ones you have had no (long term) issues with?

I've haven't had any issues with PSS ones. Also the ones Cabo used to use with the bronze housings were very good. I believe they were made in CA.

Interesting, PSS is a Face Seal with bellows, the Cabo ones came from an NZ source and are a Lip Seal like the Tides Marine:

https://second-wind.net/products/ch...ater-2-3-4-dripless-propeller-shaft-seal-cabo

If you lose water flow I think you'll get some noise from a PSS and other graphite sealing systems, while the rubber lip-seals like Tides stick to the shaft, and fail catastrophically without warning.

There was a thread on another forum where someone had a noisy PSS, turned out his raw water impeller was deteriorating , and not providing enough water pressure for the shaft seal. New impeller fixed it. When the layer of water wasn't provided, the steel rotor contacted the graphite stator. It would have eventually gotten hot enough to melt the bellows, but there was enough warning.

Out of curiosity, how do you hear such a thing?
If I'm in the engine room and my engines are in gear and running I couldn't hear a nuclear device going off .

Apparently it was a chatter he'd been hearing for a while and wondering about. My seals are under my aft stateroom, not in the engine room, so maybe they're in another part of the boat. Or maybe this sound carried through the structure of the boat more than the engine sounds, which boat builder try to isolate to the engine room and/or muffle.

For what its worth I had the Cabo NZ shaft seals for 7 yrs (0riginal) and replaced the seals twice. Pain to change out. Switched to Tides and have not replaced either for 3 yrs. Hopefully I didn't jinx myself. I do remove the hose to check for water flow every year.

I don't have crossovers on mine. From what I read, the tees should be on the seal end of the hose, correct?

I have Tides on my Viking Sport Cruiser. I have changed them once in nine years and when we did I added the seal and enclosure kit so I can do one replacement in the water. The couplings only have to come off every other seal change

My tees are not tees but a crossover on the seal flange. Each seal flange has two fittings so the crossover is completely independent from the main feed which comes off the gear cooler