New Engine bearers. Fitting out problems hopefully overcome.

[john_morris_uk]

I’m posting this in the hope it might be of interest to others faced with the same task. We’re preparing our Westerly Sealord for a blue water cruise for the next year or three or more…. One of the jobs is to replace the engine and we’ve chosen a Beta 38.

I’m now working on the engine bearers. When we bought Serendipity the original Volvo 2000 series engine had been changed to a Volvo 2040 which required much wider bearers so the original bearers have been hacked about quite a bit. I’ve had to remove the modifications and put them back closer to what they were originally. Here are a few photographs of the work as it’s progressed.

you can see the modified on the left (starboard ) side and the hacked out space for the new bearer on the right (port) side.

When I hacked out the starboard side I discovered the foam the bearer had been formed around Had become saturated with oily bilge somehow. We hacked out the old foam and I’ve filled it with new closed cell expanding foam ready for a pair of Iroko bearers cut exactly to size to be fitted into space. You can see one there are being tested for fit in the photo.

So here i’ve fitted Iroko bearers onto thickened epoxy. I had to put a 9 mm ply spacer under the starboard one to get them more or less at the same height (to be trued up accurately) later.

edited to correct lots of typos

 

[john_morris_uk]

Here is the latest as of yesterday. I’ve glassed over the two bearers with three layers of woven matting tabbed down over the original fibreglass. The fbreglass was ground back to key the area and I’m going to put a pair of 10 mm bolts through each wall to secure it to the original fibreglass structure as a belt & braces approach. The last thing I want is 100kg + of engine and gearbox breaking free complete with its engine bearers as we roll down Atlantic or Pacific swells.

 

[john_morris_uk]

I should’ve added that I rounded off the top of the bearers with a router bit and a little handheld router to make sure there wasn’t an abrupt corner for the fibreglass matting to have to be moulded around. It’s really difficult to get glass mat to mould around a very sharp bend. I also faired in any deviations with thickened epoxy to make the job of glassing over with the matting easier. I use West System epoxy if anyone is interested.

 

[gregcope]

Starting to look good John.

Will you be painting with grey/white bilge/garage floor paint?

 

[burgundyben]

Looks good John.

 

[Frank Holden]

Related to engine replacement. Have you checked the exhaust through hull?
About 19 years ago I had a mysterious leak down the back of my Sealord. Very small amounts of SW appearing in one of the embayments under the aft cabin sole.
By chance I was pottering when the engine was running and spotted a very small leak in the threaded section of the through hull. Seems a combo of exhaust gas and salt water had been eating away at the lowest and thinnest sections of the threaded part and over maybe 6 threads had eaten right through about a centimetre of thread -hope that makes sense. When the chap from the boatbuilders in Tauranga came to replace it he suggest that the original as fitted by the builders was undersized for the exhaust diameter and fitted larger.

 

[Tranona]

Neat job. Have to do a similar thing as replacing a Perkins M30 (same as the 2040 but derated) with a Beta 30. The bearers were originally for a Lister and are 500mm to inside faces. The Perkins has 460m centres so whoever installed it used metal brackets to move the centres to 520mm. The Beta centres are 450mm and the bearers are wood so I will be epoxying and bolting 70mm square mahogany inside to provide landing for the mounts and enough clearance for the sump.

 

[john_morris_uk]

Related to engine replacement. Have you checked the exhaust through hull?
About 19 years ago I had a mysterious leak down the back of my Sealord. Very small amounts of SW appearing in one of the embayments under the aft cabin sole.
By chance I was pottering when the engine was running and spotted a very small leak in the threaded section of the through hull. Seems a combo of exhaust gas and salt water had been eating away at the lowest and thinnest sections of the threaded part and over maybe 6 threads had eaten right through about a centimetre of thread -hope that makes sense. When the chap from the boatbuilders in Tauranga came to replace it he suggest that the original as fitted by the builders was undersized for the exhaust diameter and fitted larger.

Interesting. I replaced our entire exhaust system with a slightly smaller diameter exhaust hose and even put a seacock on the outlet. This was because the engine became flooded with seawater through waves slap in rough weather on the quarter overwhelming the swan neck, the extra large water trap and the high rise exhaust on the engine. It only happened in certain conditions where we had a following quartering sea, but I fitted the seacock on the exhaust in the hope that I will remember to close it if we encountered those conditions again.

 

[john_morris_uk]

Starting to look good John.

Will you be painting with grey/white bilge/garage floor paint?

I’ve got a pot of grey Danboline paint kicking about just waiting for just such a job.

 

[john_morris_uk]

Neat job. Have to do a similar thing as replacing a Perkins M30 (same as the 2040 but derated) with a Beta 30. The bearers were originally for a Lister and are 500mm to inside faces. The Perkins has 460m centres so whoever installed it used metal brackets to move the centres to 520mm. The Beta centres are 450mm and the bearers are wood so I will be epoxying and bolting 70mm square mahogany inside to provide landing for the mounts and enough clearance for the sump.

How are you going to bolt the engine mounts down? I can’t decide between machine screws set in epoxy or stainless coach screws.

 

[Tranona]

Stainless coachscrews. Used those successfully in last 2 engine replacements.

 

[PetiteFleur]

You're making an excellent job. I know it's too late now but when I fitted a Beta 25 in my Moody 33 to replace the original BMC 1500, Beta made new engine bearers to suit the original bearers. It saved me a lot of work. Not expensive either.

 

[Blueboatman]

All good
The strength ( imho) is in the layers of glass tabbed from the bearer sides out onto the hull face . Get that right and the engine is never going to be able to sheer the bearers off.
Great to use an oily wood which won’t expand shroud moisture ever get in there in 10 years time . And you’ve epoxy sealed it before bonding anyway ?
I suppose if you want belt and braces one might consider 4 sections of welded angle plate for mounting the engine on, thus the vertical faces of the angle get to be through bolted right through the bearers.. pretty overkill ?
All looking good

 

[Tranona]

The mount centres for the BMC are much wider than the Beta hence the need for brackets. Looks like John has rebuilt the bearers back to the original - if you look at the first photo they had previously been modified to take the wider Volvo 2040 (and were a mess). While the bracket solution is a good one, it is better to bolt straight to the bearers if you can.

 

[Praxinoscope]

How are you going to bolt the engine mounts down? I can’t decide between machine screws set in epoxy or stainless coach screws.

John beautiful job, but I was wondering how you were going to fix the engine mountings,, when I did a similar (but nowhere as neat) a job on my old Invicta when I changed the engine from an old Stuart Turner or a Beta 10, I ‘undercut‘ ‘channels’ through the wooden bearers so that I could bolt through when fitting the mountings with 10mm s/s bolts and nuts under, I felt with the torque generated when under engine bolting through the bearers was the strongest option.

 

[doug748]

....................... This was because the engine became flooded with seawater through waves slap in rough weather on the quarter overwhelming the swan neck, the extra large water trap and the high rise exhaust on the engine. It only happened in certain conditions where we had a following quartering sea, but I fitted the seacock on the exhaust in the hope that I will remember to close it if we encountered those conditions again.

I have a seacock on the exhaust as well. The previous owner remembered to use it but forgot to reopen it; when he started the engine it blew the head gaskets. A big red tape on the starter would be a neat idea.

 

[Tranona]

John beautiful job, but I was wondering how you were going to fix the engine mountings,, when I did a similar (but nowhere as neat) a job on my old Invicta when I changed the engine from an old Stuart Turner or a Beta 10, I ‘undercut‘ ‘channels’ through the wooden bearers so that I could bolt through when fitting the mountings with 10mm s/s bolts and nuts under, I felt with the torque generated when under engine bolting through the bearers was the strongest option.

See posts 10&11. Stainless coachscrews or machine screws in epoxy are both good methods. The former is my choice as they are easier to get out if needed.

 

[Restoration man]

I have a seacock on the exhaust as well. The previous owner remembered to use it but forgot to reopen it; when he started the engine it blew the head gaskets. A big red tape on the starter would be a neat idea.

couldn’t you use an exhaust skin fitting with flap on it lots older motor boats have these ?

 

[john_morris_uk]

couldn’t you use an exhaust skin fitting with flap on it lots older motor boats have these ?

The exhaust exits on the underneath of the counter sort of almost vertically downwards. When the boat squats under power it goes underwater (just). One of those flap valves wouldn’t work I’m afraid.

 

[Restoration man]

The exhaust exits on the underneath of the counter sort of almost vertically downwards. When the boat squats under power it goes underwater (just). One of those flap valves wouldn’t work I’m afraid.

I see your point , I just assumed In my mind it was on vertical transom