A27FC engine swap

[motthediesel]

Well, so it begins -- removal of the old Lehman/Peugeot to make room for the new(ish) Beta/Kubota. As I will be doing it in my backyard, I will have to make do with the equipment I have on hand. I have an old Ford tractor with a powerful loader, but that will not really be able to reach up and into the cockpit. Fortunately, I have a crane attachment that I made for it a few years ago, and I think that should work.

The other factor that has to be dealt with is that the engine is under the pilothouse roof, and I don't really want to have to remove that if I can get away with it. So I thought I could make a simple A frame gantry, mounted on to some kind of basic track. This would allow me to raise the motor off the beds, then roll it back into the open space of the cockpit, where it could be picked up by the crane. So I set to work with some common 2x4 lumber, some scrap tubing, and a worm gear winch from (of course ) Harbor Freight.

rolling gantry crane.jpg

The winch is loaded with Dyneema 1/4" line, and it's driven by a cordless drill. I have several of these units, and I use them for all kinds of lifting jobs. The great thing about worm winches is that they can't freewheel, so your control, both up and down, is always positive. The track the gantry runs on is just a 2x4 on the flat, with wood strips nailed on to keep the caster wheels centered. The tracks will be re-enforced in the way of the engine bay opening by short lengths of 2x4 screwed on underneath, once it's in the boat.

Here you see it in action, with the old engine now moved to the rear of the cockpit. It will be blocked up there, the gantry will be lifted out of the way, and then the engine can be lifted out.

engine out.jpg

And here's the empty bay -- I can finally clean the old oily goo out of there!

empty bay.jpg

That's all for this installment, more to follow soon.

Tom

[Dieselram94]

I’m looking forward to your progress! Love the little crane you built!!!

[WillieC]

I like this. I admire your ingenuity. Just don’t be in a hurry. I’ll be watching this space.

[DCatSea]

Fully understand your not wanting to remove the Wheelhouse. LOVE the gantry and would like a video of it in action. Will be watching your progress.
If it's not a silly question, what's the old Lehman like?

[motthediesel]

If it's not a silly question, what's the old Lehman like?

It is really fine, just smokey until it warms up -- overall, it's a good runner. The only other issue is that it seems to have some kind of leak in the closed cooling system. Over the course of the season, the coolant gradually becomes diluted with water. I suspect it's the heat exchanger, but I don't know for sure.

It kinda seems a shame to part it out, I might see if one of my Amish neighbors might like to make a power unit out of it.

Tom

[motthediesel]

OK, so now the old engine has been pulled, and it is sitting on blocks in the cockpit. The next step will be to hook onto it with my tractor crane and lift it out of there. The "tractor crane" is just a couple sections of Rohn antenna tower mounted onto my forklift loader attachment. It's supported by two guys made up of 1/2 dyneema rope, and the actual lift is another H.F. worm winch driven by a cordless drill. It's capability is quite impressive, as I previously used it to raise all the structural parts of my 48'x36' timber frame shop.

So first we used the lift to remove the gantry from over the engine, then we maneuvered close to the boat so that we could position the lift directly over the engine. The lift was rigged with a two-part tackle (one running block on the load) and the drill slowly spun the winch until the engine was well above the cockpit coaming. Then the tractor was backed up until it was well clear of the boat. I had my son there to handle the tag line to keep the load from swinging.

engine out.jpg

tractor crane.jpg

With the two part tackle, there wasn't enough line to lower it all the way down to the ground, so we positioned a small utility trailer under it, and added shoring until we could set it in place. We then used the fork lift to pick the old motor up off the trailer and take it to the shop. The new Beta/Kubota was then lifted out and placed onto the same shoring on the trailer.

Beta blocker.jpg

(to be continued)

[motthediesel]

After the new engine was positioned near the boat, we got the crane back over it and lifted it up enough to get it back over the rear section of the cockpit. We then removed the little staging trailer and got ready to move it back into the boat.

beta lift.jpg

Back over the boat, we just lowered the motor down until we could position it onto blocking in the cockpit.

on blocks.jpg

Then it was just a matter of using the crane again to put the gantry back over the engine and into it's tracks, as you see here.

gantry.jpg

That's all for now. Next we will have to sort out "feet" on the block to work with the existing beds and motor mounts, but no hurry now, as we can fit the winter cover and take our time with the project.

Tom

[motthediesel]

Sorry I’ve not posted anything lately, but I’ve been lured into a home improvement project. Don’t you all hate that?
Anyway, I have gotten a bit more done. The problem I had with the gantry was that I could not get the lift point forward enough to be centered over the engine. The frame is stopped by the “glove box” build-out on the dash. And the winch lift point was fixed in the center of the gantry beam. That was OK for removing the old engine, as it just swung back a bit when it came off the mounts, but to properly install the new motor, we need to be able to lower it right down into its final position.
The solution would be to mount the winch on a track, this would allow it to slid fore and aft to wherever it needs to be. So, I found a uni-strut car on Amazon that was rated for a sufficient load. With a length of strut mounted under the beam, now we can get the engine lowered into the exact right spot.
Sorry some of those are flipped, I’m not used to posting with my phone.

Tom

[motthediesel]

Well, it's been a long cold winter here, and I confess I've had little enthusiasm for working in an unheated boat, but I'm back at it now -- so to work we go on the motor mounts.

The ones that came on the motor, as used in the lifeboat, were all wrong for the Albin. The mounts were set for very narrow beds, and all four were located on the engine block itself, not with the rear mounts on the bell housing (which is more common). I should add here that moving the mount locations, as they are in the boat, is pretty much a non-starter. As built (at least on my boat) they glassed 1/2" - 13 nuts inside the beds. and so I really want to stick with those as they are.

So, I was able to get a set of "generic" mounts from Beta that were wider, and mounted on the block forward, and on the bell housing aft. That helped, but they were still a bit too narrow, and the aft mounts did not quite go back far enough. So, I I took a "wizz wheel" in an angle grinder and cut the mounting ears off the lifeboat mounts. Then I clamped those onto the generic mounts, and lowered the motor into place.

motormount 1.jpg

motormount 2.jpg

That was fine, but a problem appeared, the beds, for some reason, are not on a single plane. The forward section slopes to the rear at the propshaft angle (about 7 deg) -- but the aft part of the bed slopes to the bow, at about the same degree. So the rear mounts will have to modified to account for that. (It should noted here that the mounts on the original Lehman/Peugeot had an angle adjustment feature which could adapt to this.)

bed angle aft.jpg

bed angle forward.jpg

That was going to be an issue...

Tom