Add Grease fittings to a Mirage drive.

Add Grease fittings (the part Hobie forgot ) to your Mirage drive.

In the spirit of Roadrunner's maintenance, tuning and performance blogs I offer the grease fitting project.

Buy 2 Stainless Steel Grease Fittings (Ace HW @ 80cents each). Use 1/4" x 28 tapered. They are quite small fittings and not very long.

You will also need a 1/16" drill (for a pilot hole), a 3/16" hole (for the final hole) and a 1/4" - 28NF Tap (to cut the threads).

If you drive the drum shaft off to one side each time you work on that side you can avoid disassembly, but removing the drums completely will make it easier to work on.

See picture for location, drill pilot hole. Hole is drilled between the cable end ridge and the pedal end ridge of the drum. Then drill the 3/16" hole, then cut threads with the tap tool, clean off all the plastic chaff. Add a drop of locktite to the grease fitting and carefully screw it in place. Don't overtighted, but make sure it is threaded all the way in. Do this on both drums.

I used a 3/16" drill for the hole before adding threads because the plastic is soft and a 1/4" drill would make too big a hole.
If you are uncertain, practice the operation on an old piece of plastic before drilling the drum







After assembly grease with a readily available hand grease gun, using marine grade grease.

Grease as often as you want without anymore disassembly. The new grease will push out old grease & grit to keep drive smooth.

This is an older, 6 year old drive that I use on a regular basis w/ turbo fins.

BTW - there are actually 2 locations (1 fore & 1 aft) where you can drill in a grease fitting on each drum. You only need 1 per drum & it should not matter which location, but I chose the forward location.

Hey, Hobie - If you use my tip in manufacturing future drives I want some free kayak stuff

Interesting idea, considering how much trouble it is to take drive apart to re lube. You and RR should get together to create a repair manual, it would be a worthwhile investment for us diy'ers. Thanks

Yak, what a great way to access a critical lube point! Very professional looking as well.

It will be interesting to get your evaluation on how it works out.

Thanks!

Grease fitting placement allows the stem of a grease gun tool to easily reach the fitting. Fitting is also centrally located to the drum shaft to allow even distribution of grease.

To facilitate complete distribution of grease on the entire drum shaft just work the drive a little. With each hand holding a drum you can flex the drums away from the spine; and you can even rotate the drum shaft 180degrees with pliers padded with a rag (only for older non-splined shafts & not really a necessary step). Pump in more grease as needed.

Since grease accumulates dirt, using new grease to force out the old, contaminated grease makes for a better lubrication procedure. Plus there is always a small pocket of grease on the drum shaft. Lube as often as you want without disassembly.

Current Drum Shafts have splines, so rotating the shaft is not recommended.



We added the spline to help prevent the shaft from rotating and working to one side. This is a bigger issue with the new click-n-go. Those boats should have this newer drum shaft. It is easy to replace. Simply hammer out the old shaft with the new one.

_________________
Matt Miller
Former - Director of Parts and Accessory Sales
Warranty and Technical Support
Hobie Cat USA
(Retired 11/7/2022)

Did these start being used on the V2 drives only?

Or are they in '08 drives (non-V2) as well?

Hard to keep up with all the improvements.

Does the splined drum shaft have a new part number, cause if I mail order a drum shaft I don't want the dealer to give me old inventory.

Same part number. You would have to confirm which one they are shipping, but my shelf only has the latest version. We started using the spline in 2008 I believe. Latest shaft also is beveled on the ends rather than rounded to give a slightly longer effective length for c-n-g hulls.

_________________
Matt Miller
Former - Director of Parts and Accessory Sales
Warranty and Technical Support
Hobie Cat USA
(Retired 11/7/2022)

Great solution Yak!
Thanks for posting.

For those of us that fish/pedal in skinney water and pull our boats up onto sand will the grease hold sand ant thus wear the shaft?

I hace been hesitant to use grease on the drive parts for this reason. I do use copious quantities of wd-40 which doesnt seem to attract sand and grit.

Beaching the boat bow first with the drive still installed will get sand & grit in the mechanism no matter what lubricant you use. I always remove the drive before beaching, even if I have to get out in shallow water and lift the bow some to get the drive out. Beaching stern first or using the wheels when beaching may also help.

I grease drive each time I disassembled the drive, and use WD-40 & light oil after each outing. I just got tired of disassembling the drive, so periods between greasing grew longer and longer. With the new fittings I can grease after each outing if I want.

Grease will get dirty, and thus need renewal/replacing; but WD-40 dissipates far to quickly to be a primary lubricant on something like the drum shaft. It is a real conundrum

Roadrunner's has several helpful posts on the topic of lubricants & maintenance

I agree, WD-40 isn't much of a lubricant but it does replace water, orilongs the life of the part when out of the water and does NOT seem to attract sand and grit the way grease does.

Being a lazy old fart, I only remove the drive when returning to the launch point to take out therefor my drive does see wear from oysters, sand and such. That wear is most evident on the chains, and will I suppose, be the cause of chain and drum replacement in the future. The drive is now three years old and still going strong (knock on wood/head) with two years of TurboFins.