Engine alignment

After another coat of varnish on the locker lids I got on with lining up the engine with the propeller shaft I started by setting the engine roughly in its fore and aft position using the wear marks on the propeller shaft in way of the cutlass bearing and surprise surprise the new mounts did not seem to match the position of the originals it almost appears as if the engine has grown in length impossible I know but. I decided to ignore that bit for the time being and got on with lining up the engine and shaft I used various bits of steel packing pieces to achieve the correct height then after measuring the total thickness of packing at each foot I machined up solid packing pieces for each foot came to a shade under 9mm a lot more than I had calculated but at least I was on the right side I wasn't looking to lower the engine which would have been a bit more problematic.

Machining packing piece

All four packing pieces

After a little research on the engine number it would appear that the engine was manufactured in 1988 so not the original engine however it had been used in the boat I guess the mounts may have been modified to suit the bolt holes in the bearers, possibly elongated holes in the mounts? I don't know what the original engine was but most of these boats seem to have a Thornycroft T90 which possibly had a shorter distance between the mounts.

After another coat of varnish this morning I removed the temporary packing and fitted the purpose made ones and reconnected the coupling. Going back to the problem with the engine mounts I decided to turn them so that I could get the bolts in to secure the mounting plates without fouling the mounts which you can just see in the photograph the mounts are turned inwards towards each other so that the propeller thrust doesn't try and push the engine to one side.

Engine lined up and connected to the shaft

The next job is to build up the end of the shaft log, with some thickened epoxy, so that the stern tube sits square with the shaft this will need to be done with the shaft in place and hopefully without glueing the shaft to the stern tube probably wrap with cling film.