110 Cookson Lane | Whitefield, ME 04353 | 207-232-7600 | tim@lackeysailing.com
Summer Song | Wednesday, January 15, 2014
After various delays over the past couple weeks, the new engine arrived, and I headed out to pick it up at a local terminal. Back at the shop, I unloaded it from the truck and prepared to get back to work on the new engine foundations. The engine is a Beta 20 three-cylinder diesel.
Shortly after I arrived back at the shop, the mahogany stock for the new toerails and related work arrived, so with that on hand I could start work on the toerails in the near future.
I installed the four flexible engine mounts on my engine template, located at the new 16" mounting center marks I'd laid out earlier. I set the four mounts to their approximate halfway adjustment point, or about 3", and added a flat washer beneath the platform to stand in for the lockwasher that would go there during final engine installation.
To double-check the template layout and measurements, I held it against the engine for a visual confirmation.
Back in the boat, I reset the shaft centerline string and cross supports I'd prepared earlier, and supported the engine template on these boards, double-checking its proper alignment with the shaft string. Once I was satisfied with the alignment and location, I tacked both the support boards and the template in place with screws, which allowed me to remove the string and make more room for the next steps.
I planned to build off the existing mounts where necessary, using solid fiberglass bases capped with a length of 1/2" G-10 epoxy glass for the actual mounting surface. To determine the height of the modified bases, as well as aid in construction, I began with a plywood template to stand in for the top surface, and clamped these pieces, which I cut to the same size as the eventual top, to the under-hanging engine mounts.
Next I wanted to get the actual engine template out of the way, so I cut blocks to the right size (3" mount height minus the thickness of the plywood support strips = 2-1/2") and glued them between the transverse support members and the longitudinal foundation tops (the plywood stand-in strips), which then held those strips in their current and proper position without the need to clamp them to the engine template at all. Then, after making some reference marks, I could remove the template, leaving just the plywood strips below which to build the new fiberglass foundations.
The aft corners of the plywood template (which in the final installation would be replaced with 1/2" x 3" G-10) just contacted the hull at their outboard corners, and were tight up against the existing (old) after engine foundation pads.
The forward ends on each side were about 2" above the existing (old) engine foundation pads, so two layers of 1" thick prefabricated fiberglass would make up the required height for the new foundations.
Total Time Billed on This Job Today: 7
Hours
