Fitting the engine

There are a whole raft of blogs and articles on doing the engine change yourself, so I see no point in repeating most of those. There are however some lessons I learnt, most of which could have been avoided if I had listened to advice, including my own.

Preparation

Before you do anything, take lots of pictures, and video. If you think one picture of a particular view is enough, take 10 more different ones. Videos are good too because they show things you don’t necessarily see in the pictures. I try to do this with most jobs, and it makes the re-assembly process so much easier.

Then, make a copy of the pictures in case you lose your phone! That is definitely the voice of experience. 

As you disconnect and remove items / wires / any connections, label everything. If a wire disconnects from a terminal somewhere, use tape and mark the wire and what it came off of. Take pictures of the label on the engine part, it helps you or the engineer confirm what had been connected where. I didn't do enogh of this and it became a right royal pain later when I was trying to sort out the electrics, especially as there had been a gap in between the stripping and rewiring of several months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

As you remove any hardware place everything in marked bags / containers or something. Those little plastic tubs Chinese takeaway comes in work great.

After what seemed an eternity of waiting, with personal issues, a virus pandemic and broken promises, the day for the engineers to finally start fitting the engine arrived one bright, sunny Monday.

Removing the engine

The engineers turned up about 1.30 to have a look at what was going to be needed over the week. After about 20 minutes of talking about the process, and likely difficulties, of removing the sealed in, watertight cockpit floor to get the engine out, I decided I would leave them to it for a bit. There are occasions when someone is working on your pride and joy that the best way to get things done is to use a little more brute force than is comfortable for the owner to see. I thought I'd give them a bit more freedom than having me sitting in a corner wincing at every bang & wallop.

I returned an hour & a half later to see no workmen or van around. With resignation and a sense of doom I climbed the ladder up onto the boat as my phone started to ring .... It was the engineers.

 

I looked at what remained of my cockpit as I answered the phone.
"Hi Bill, it's Gary" said the voice at the end of the phone. "We got on better than expected."
"So I can see, I'm sat here looking at bleedin' great hole in my boat."
"Yeah, sorry about that."
"Don't be sorry, I'm ecstatic! I can't believe you got so far!"

What I had expected to take a day at least had been done in less than 2 hours. Over the moon was an understatement! Celebratory beers were called for.

 

Day 2

On the Tuesday everyone arrived at about 10.30. Lifting the engine out turned into a 4 man job with me, trying not to get in the way, 2 engineers and the yard supervisor driving the hoist. It was a squeeze getting the big old 38hp Thorneycroft beast out of the hole in the cockpit. The new Volvo is the same HP give or take a couple, but much smaller, lighter and more efficient.

After a couple of hours including measuring and comparing the two engines I was left with the pleasure of cleaning 30 years of grime and sludge from the bottom of the smelly engine room, putting anything back in their would be criminal.


The rest of the week were mostly spent cleaning the engine bay & the joint for where the cockpit base sits, and sorting out the old wiring. This doesn't sound too bad, but the wiring was a snake pit and the grime was well dried and ingrained. Cleaning the engine bay out without the engine in there is so much easier.

I had plans to clean back, prep and paint the engine bay, unfortunately this never happened, and now I'm left working around the new engine. At least I managed to get it all cleaned out and sort a lot of the old wiring out while there was space.

Having the sun out, some friends hanging out around the bar in the evenings and gorgeous sunsets over Poole harbour didn't help things progress as fast as they could either!

Fitting the new engine

Lifting the engine in was pretty much a reverse of lifting the old one out, but with a sight more care involved. They had used two lengths of steel box section to raise the height of the engine beds and line the engine up pretty much to the same height as the old lump.

Once the engine was lifted in and it was obvious I was just getting in the way of any jobs the engineers were doing I left them to it for a while. The new fuel filter was fitted and the system bled, some of the electrics had been fitted by the engineers, to the starter motor and the power out from the alternator, but a large part of that job was up to me as I had taken the electrical connections off the old engine all those months ago. Of course that had been a twin alternator setup, and this was single, so there was a bit of sorting to be done, but more on that another time.

Eventually it came time to put her back in the water. We cut it fine with the falling tide, any longer and we may have had to be pulled out of the water again to wait for the next week, I really couldn't cope with yet more delays. Once the engineer was happy the engine was running fine I shot out of the tiny marina at Lakeyard like a cork out of a shaken up Champaign bottle! After putting Isosceles on the nearest available mooring it was back into the yard, and many many celebration beers. After waiting 2 1/2 years it was well earned!