The New Engine pt 2

At last here's the second installment.

So, with a nice empty engine bay, take time to give it a clean and repaint.

Cillet Bang greasey floor cleaner does a bloody good job. Then during a final wipe with some "alchol a Brulee" (Origo spirit fuel) discover that this stuff disolves old bilge paint leaving a lovely clean surface.

Next wire brush the bearers. Remember that I had wider legs made for the engine so it could sit on the existing bearers, it's worth noting that the bearers run inline with the prop shaft which is a common convention and a great aid to aligning things.


Once the yard has done their bit of heavy lifting you'll have a shiny new beta engine in your cabin




Now comes lots of engine in and engine out. Prop shaft in prop shaft out. Measure twice cut once!






After some jiggling we found that by very slightly twisting the fwd feet on the two fwd legs on the engine it was possible to re use two of the existing holes in the bearers.


Next we cut the shaft to length having left enough room for the addition of the rope cutter. Then we attached the centaflex coupling to the shaft. This give a nice big flat surface to compare to the out put plate on the engine and makes alignment far far easier.

There then follows much gentle tweaking of engine position and leg height etc.

Once you are happy you then scribe around the feet and the mounting holes and are ready to drill! You may wish to remove the bearers to do this but we found that there is enough room to get in there with a good sharp drill bit and 18v Ryobi cordless drill..... and bang goes your lovely clean bilge!





Once Drilled and tidy again, back in goes the engine , in go the bolts and more tweaking and aligning. Various feelers and measuring devices used.

Also worth noting is that the Centaflex can happily live with 1 degree of misalignmnet. Now on the face of it this sounds like a small amount. But if you do some maths as to what this would be in terms of where the mount meets the engine you will be surprised. THIS IS NOT TO BE USED AS AN EXCUSE FOR POOR ALIGNMENT.

With everything bolted down tightly and the engine box reassembled you should end up looking like this...





Here's the fitted rope cutter. Note that a special clamp is needed to fit the stationery part to the the cutless bearing housing.