Into the truck for a ride to the shop

Of course nothing gets done at a yacht club on a Saturday without supervision.  Here are Mike and Mary Stainsby inspecting our work (they had threatened to set up chairs on the lawn to watch the process, but it was a bit too rainy).

The lift made dropping the engine into the truck quite easy, but we quickly realized that we needed to block the engine before we tied it down.

Blocked and ready to be tied down.

Out to the head walk and up the ramp to the parking lot

The dock attached to the finger was still too narrow to add the second balancing leg to the engine lift, so we continued to roll it with James L sitting on the "unused" leg.  Here they are going up the short ramp from the dock to the headwalk.















Once on the headwalk, it was wide enough that we were able to attache the second leg, making the engine lift properly balanced

 

At the foot of the ramp leading to the parking lot.  The winter rainy season was a good time to do this project, since the river level on the Columbia was high due to all the rain and snow melt.

We rigged a climbing rope from the top of the ramp, through a turning block and then tied it to the engine lift as a back-up.  The guys got the engine up the ramp so quickly that Jessica and I had trouble keeping up with them and keeping the rope taunt.

Celebration at the top when all went well

On to the dock

On left - James Benson balancing the engine on the coaming as the lift is readied for attachment.





Below are the engine balancers as the lift is turned to start moving off the dock finger to the rest of the dock. 

What is not shown here, is that James L is actually sitting on the leg extensions for the lift and counterbalancing the weight of the engine.  Without his weight sitting as a counterbalance, the lift would have fallen forward with the engine hitting the deck.




Another view of the engine on the lift as it is moved toward the rest of the dock.  Because the finger was so narrow, we could only attach one of the extension legs.  James L continued to sit on the other wedged into the lift as a human counter-balance.

From the boat to the dock

 With the engine lifted out of the cabin, we determined that where we had to attach the boom to the engine to bring it out of the cabin meant that we could not swing it directly over to the waiting engine lift on the dock finger.  We had to lower the engine to the bench (still not far outboard enough for the engine lift to be attached)

By moving the engine up to the coaming we were able to get the engine in a position that we could then attach it by chain to the engine lift (we put some wood under it to protect the boat).  Of course this meant that the engine lift's extension legs could not be used because the dock finger was so narrow.

Hoisting the engine out of the boat

 Engine removal day (March 12, 2011) dawned with lots of rain.  We rigged up a tarp over the boom to try to keep everyone (and the engine and boat interior) relatively dry.  By the time we got ready to actually remove the engine from the boat, the rain had stopped, but everything was pretty wet.

 James Lockaby doing the final removal of the engine from its mounts.  We did end up completely removing the port side engine mount because we could not reach it well enough to detach it from the engine and there was not enough room to lift the engine over it.

We attached a come-a-long with nylon strapping to the boom, then lowered it to attach to the lifting rings on the engine.  There is very little clearance for the engine to come out into the cabin, so we had to be very careful in determining the height to lift the engine.  The front engine mount had to be removed at this point because we could not lift the engine quite high enough to slide it over the mount.  We then put a piece of plywood under the engine to slide it into the cabin.  The engine was detached from the come-a-long long enough to transfer it to the cabin side of the companionway and reattach it to the engine so it could be lifted out of the boat.

Once the engine was in the cabin and reattached to the come-a-long, we were able to slowly crank it out of the boat.  Lots of help made this a relatively easy job. We were able to remove the engine without any damage to the boat or any humans.

Engine is completely detached and ready for lifting

James B, James L and I got the engine completely detached yesterday. It took us about 3 hours, including a trip to the hardware store.

While detaching the engine, we discovered another problem with the system that neither of the mechanics who checked out the boat discovered.  James B found a small clear round piece of plastic in the bilge.  At the time we didn't know what it was and figured it was just flotsam that somehow ended up there.  It turned out to be the entire bottom of the raw water strainer!  This means that at some point, the engine not only lost oil, but also lacked water to the heat exchanger.  Not sure why either of the mechanics who checked this out managed to miss that the entire bottom of the strainer was missing!  We have no idea when this was broken.

Detachment went smoothly, as we carefully detached and labeled each wire and hose.  The last step, releasing the engine mounts resulted in a quick trip to the hardware store.  It seems that none of us possessed a 15/16" socket, and the nuts for the engine mount required one.  We also needed a swivel for the sockety wrench since the port side engine mount is almost impossible to reach.  Since I tend to measure my projects in terms of hardware store trips, this part of the project was pretty successful.

Saturday morning we will lift the engine out and get it to the shop.  We are not sure yet whether we will use Phil's cherry picker or the boom and main sheet to do the removal.  It will depend on how well we can get the cherry picker stabilized, either on the boat or dock, and just how much reach it has.

Hopefully we will be able to dodge the rain showers predicted for today.

Planning Continues

I spent the weekend studying the Service Manual for our engine.  It's amazing how many parts a "simple" engine has.   The manual does a good job of setting out just how everything comes apart (and how it should go back together.  It even contains warnings and tips about how to do certain things.