Yes, it gets confusinger and confusingerer.
I reassembled the gearcase without the drive shaft and with the washers in the correct order. I was able to turn the output shaft. Emboldened by this, I reinstalled the drive shaft, only to find the system seizing up again. Yet, not completely, there was some improvement.
I set about looking into the possibility of an incorrect driveshaft. What I discovered is that the working unit has a driveshaft top that looks like the one pictured in the first thumnail.
The one that’s in the unit that isn’t working is the second thumnail.
I’ve learned a lot since I started putting this old motor back together some ten years or so ago. Probably forgot half of what I learned when life got busy and I had to put it aside for a while.
At any rate, it looks like I may have the wrong drive shaft. Which leads me to a question. How hard would it be for a machinist to fabricate these shafts? I see a lot of used crappy ones on Ebay.
What I gather from the info I now have, and some online searching, the drive shaft in my working lower unit is the original 303871, which was ok to use in the earlier RD10 units up to RD-18.
I searched for and found what appears to be a very nice specimen of 303871 drive shaft for a very good price. We’ll see how that works out.
