Engine Mounts & Alignment

Although we’re doing a lot of the work ourselves getting these new engines in and hooked up, there are a few things we’re leaving to folks who know what they’re doing – one of those is placing the engine mounts and aligning the engines to the shafts.  This is the most critical step of the entire process, as misalignment can cause havoc with the shaft journals and packings, gearboxes and transmissions.  Although we’re keeping our original transmissions in place, the mounts that hold them have become worn and misshapen over the past 40 years so we’ll be replacing those mounts as well.  The bolts coming out of the old mounts are no longer straight, which would make it very difficult to do a proper alignment, as tightening the hold-down nuts would skew the engine or transmission.

The new mounts are just like the old ones – a casting with a hard rubber vibration dampening piece and a mounting bolt, except these are straight.  

Attached to the transmissions on either side are brackets that come out to meet the engine mounts, which are placed on the boat’s stringers.  These brackets have a solid metal rod about an inch in diameter than can slide laterally inside a sleeve for adjustment – except they were all frozen solid in the position they were set so many years ago. 

Jorgen, the mechanic, was able to free them up by getting them red hot with a torch, followed by some ambitious pounding with a very heavy hammer.  He then sand blasted them, honed out the sleeves and gave them a new coat of paint with the paint I had used on the transmissions.  They’re now back in place holding up the transmissions and the rear of the engines.

The front of the engine also has brackets that come out to meet the motor mounts, but the ones supplied with the engines are not long enough to meet the boat’s stringers squarely.  Those will either be modified or just replaced with custom made ones – Here Jorgen is sawing up some pieces of steel for making some new ones.

 

 

Removing the front brackets for modification/replacement requires that the engine be supported – an A frame and beam setup is in the boat for supporting the engines while those brackets are removed.

The new and longer front brackets were welded, drilled and given a coat of paint.  These will support the front of the engines.

 

The new front motor mounts needed to be mounted a bit higher than they were for the Perkins, and rather than add another short spacer to the existing block that was its support, we are making new blocks.  Irv ordered a length of 4 x 12 clear fir timber, which will be used for that purpose.  There are already notches in the stringers where the existing blocks are mounted, so those will be removed and new, taller ones will go in their place.  They will be lag bolted to the stringers, and the motor mounts in turn will be lag bolted to the blocks.  In this case, a few pictures are worth many words.

 

Here the old support block has been removed, and the lag bolt holes have been drilled and filled with dowels in preparation for mounting a new block.

In this photo the new support block has been lag bolted to the stringer.  The bolt holes were counter-bored so the bolt heads would not be in the way.  The motor mount is set on top of the support block, and will be lag bolted into place as part of the engine alignment process.

All is bolted into place here, and the support block and sealant have a couple coats of gray paint to finish them off.  The motor mount on the other side of this engine can also be seen in this photo.

We had quite a bit of that clear fir timber left over, and it's now in Ray's basement for use in some future woodworking project.

With the engines secure, we continued with our tasks of connecting things, working towards engine startup.  Our work days consist mostly of 2 or 3 hours, 3 or 4 days a week - we decided that any more than that it would seem too much like work!