check to be sure starter nut is holding in place - suggested regular maintenance

[wn6ngp]

After needing to be towed in I can recommend something to be checked periodicaly
like regular maintenance.

On my 3 cyl 2cy 90hp outboard the nut holding the starter enagement gear in place worked its way loose. Consequently when I went to start it the gear just ran up the spline of the starter losing its engagement. I believe that this was something that was slowly happening over the last 17 years and finally the nut just popped off.

I put it all back together and this time used some blue loctite that I will look at periodically to make sure that the loctite seal is not broken leading to a repeat problem.

Not sure how common this is, I would have never thought to check on this but its on my list now.

Anyone experience this or is it a 1 off kind of thing?

 

[Texasmark]

I had the '02 90 and as I recall the nut had a nylon insert? Did/does yours, or does it have another type locking mechanism besides your added thread sealer?

 

[wn6ngp]

Sorry for such late reply. Somehow I missed your comment. To answer your question, no, there was no nylon insert in the nut like a typical self locking nut. On mine they made it self locking by the shape of the nut. The way that they did this was that toward the end of the threads the nut was squashed to be slightly non circular. Furthermore, the nut was made of a softer metal so what happens is that the nut gradually got tighter as the bolt threaded into that squashed portion. I am suspicious that the existing nut was never tightened as far as it should have been to achieve the locking function. I think that it was in a very loose state for quite a while before it hopped off entirely. So I tightened it as much as I could along with the blue thread lock. After I did that I made a mark on the nut and the end of the bolt to see if the nut is backing off. After 2 trips I've noticed no backing off. I'm going to check this frequently. A red thread locker might be more appropriate.