How to clean drive shaft properly

[byron.akhavi@gmail.com]

I have a 2019 EFI F40LA motor. I boat in freshwater and want to know what kind of emery cloth should be used to clean the drive shaft before greasing. I am assuming that emery cloth should be used to clean before applying light grease. Also, should the shift and drive shaft splines be lightly greased to avoid locking?? I am assuming that the top of these shafts should not be greased at all since this could cause locking?? I plan to use Yamaha WR No 2 grease for the splines. Your comments are appreciated as always. Thanks.

[DennisG01]

Are the splines that bad that you need emery cloth? If it's just old grease, wipe it off and just reapply new grease. Keep it simple. Anything that cleans oil could be used if you want to get more of the old stuff off. There's probably a dozen products that can do that easily. Yes, do not do the top of the shaft. Any decent waterproof marine grease will be fine.

[robert graham]

3M Scotchbrite pad….then grease it all over….

[99yam40]

if it is rusty, then I would use a wire wheel to get most of it off

[byron.akhavi@gmail.com]

Thanks for the answers. I will use a Scotchbrite pad to clean the shaft and just wipe off the old grease on the upper splines and shift shaft splines.

[robert graham]

The driveshaft is some type of stainless alloy, so there shouldn’t be much “rust” on it…..the upper splines are where I spend time cleaning and coating with grease….so you never experience the very bad upper spline corrosion/ unable to remove lower unit nightmare….