Day 3 of Engine Bay Work

Today Mercedes put in 4 hours to "finish" his part of the engine bed work. 

In the afternoon I saw Neil who presented me with Mercedes' bill of 5450 pesos (about $435 USD) for 2.5 days of work.  That was at the rate of $18 USD per hour and I was more than happy about the work and the bill.

Neil and I then discussed the project.  He told me that Joel has already started preparing two lengths of 3/8" angle steel with 4" sides.  He then preempted my question of coating by describing the plan to primer the steel then putting on 2 coats of 2-part epoxy which made me more than happy.  This will be the only chance that we get to coat that steel and I want to make it good.

We then had a good interaction on the fitting process. My first question regarded the plan to fiberglass the engine beds and was Joel absolutely sure that the engine beds would be either correct or a bit low, because if the result was too high we would have to cut through the fiberglass topping and then do it again.  Neil telephoned Joel who gave assurance that the result would be within the capabilities of the engine mount adjustments.

Then I posed questions about the plan to pre drill the steel rails.  I had become ultra cautious about everything and had measured the engine directly and learned that (a) the engine mounts were not spaced in an exact rectangle as per the Volvo diagram but had a half inch difference between the left and right sides and (2) Mac's jig was slightly different from the official diagram that he had worked from which I had shown to be not quite accurate.  Don't get me wrong: Mac's jib had been invaluable for the rough work, but for the precise work we had to work from the reality of the engine that is sitting in the workshop.  I made the point that if we pre drilled and fitted the rails then found when the engine was lowered that it did not fit perfectly - including lining up perfectly with the shaft - we would be in big trouble.

From this discussion came the plan to use the wooden gallows that we plan to build for lowering the engine into the boat for raising the engine up and down for several "fittings".  The steel will be placed on the mounts, the engine will be lowered and positioned, then the steel will be marked for drilling.  The engine will be raised and the steel will be removed for drilling and painting.  I like this plan much better because it is more predictable and sure.

Then I raised the issue of the width if the existing engine beds.  I expressed surprise that Joel had not built up the insides of the wooden engine mounts.  As it stood the center bolts of the engine mounts would fit just inside of the mounts.  I told Neil that this assumed that the engine beds were perfectly aligned because the slightest deviation would put us in trouble.  Neil said that he expected that the mount bolts would pass just inside of the turns of the angle steel, leaving enough room for the nuts below.  Even so, I said, what about the width of the mount feet?  We looked at the drawings on his computer, printed out the layout of the feet, and I went to the boat to measure the gap between the two engine beds.  The results were not good: the gap between the wooden engine mounts was about 1.5" too wide.  Neil looked at the numbers and agreed that it appeared that we would have to add another 1" of width to the inside of the engine beds.  I asked that he and Joel please double check my findings and that will be done early in the morning.

This will explain why I put quotation marks around the word "finish" in the first sentence of this entry since it is quite likely that Mercedes will be back for more work.

In general I am extremely pleased with all aspects of the installation effort.  Neil is a delight to work with: interested, involved, ready to listen, extremely responsive, and in a position to get things done.  He has invited me to get involved and has made me feel free to do whatever tasks I want in this project.  Joel is great to work with and several people have told me how good he is at engine alignment (including Rick this morning, whose engine was realigned by Joel).  And the pace so far has blown me away.  I've had too many experiences of contractors putting in a few hours then disappearing for days until I  chase them down by telephone to get them back.  This is different: they are fully focused and my biggest worry is getting to the boat and opening it up before they arrive in the morning.