Preparation Work

I spent several hours this morning drawing up floor, front, and side view plans of my engine compartment, to scale. The engine mounting rails are heavy pieces of angle iron set on what is probably wood covered with fiberglass. Both are 680 mm long. The one on the port side is 80mm wide and the one on the starboard side is 110mm wide. The inner edges of the rails are 380 mm apart.

The compartment itself is 560 mm wide and 900 mm long. The sliding cover gives 570 mm of head room. The distance from the base of the sliding cover to the bilge is 400 mm. The distance from the rail to the bilge is 350 mm.

I then had a look at the specifications of the Yanmar 3JH5E KM35P, the 3 cylinder 40 HP engine (continuous 35 mhp rating, actually) that I have been told is the right size for this boat. It looks like the Yanmar mounting bolts are 412 mm apart (plus allowance for the 206 mm x 60 mm pads), so I could get lucky and have a relatively simple mounting job. The engine weighs 173 kg (381 lbs) which should considerably lighten Pachuca's load.

The engine will definitely fit in my compartment. The only tricky part may be finding room for the 160 amp alternator and hopefully the 80 amp alternator too.

This afternoon a bit of diving and was amazed to find that using a tape measure and a caliper underwater works OK. I needed to get information on my propeller and shaft for my meeting with Joel.

I've got a "right hand" 3 blade propeller. The distance from the center to the outer edge of the blades is 9". The width of the blades at their widest point is 7" The propeller shaft has a 1.25" diameter. These measurements were the best that I could do under water, but they should be fairly accurate. The prop measurements should be within 5 mm. The shaft measurement should be exact.