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When I worked for Viking as a mechanic we had replaced some 60 boats' struts with new ones. We removed the old strut and filled in the retaining hardware holes. To place the new strut in the proper location a tight wire was strung between the engine room transmission/gear and the back of the bottom new strut (on larger hulls there was an intermediate strut) which was held in place by a special jack. On the wire was discs which were fit to the shaft size. When the discs were able to be inserted into the strut with little effort they were then centered and strut was in the proper place. The strut base which mated to the boats hull was coated with wax and filler was put on top (to the hull and strut) after finding the proper location and holes were drilled for the securing hardware. Then the strut was dropped, wax removed and placed back into position so that the bolt hardware installed and the discs still were centered. There may be a few details I've left out but we never enlarged the strut to accommodate moving the cutless bearing around. We did not use a lazer as some do- it's easy to fool the lazer with jack stand adjustments and the disc/wire method was more than accurate with proven results time and time again. I also worked for Liberty Yachts and set and installed several hulls with struts and engine placements with this method.
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