End Bed

Well, it was a weekend of cutting, grinding and welding. A bit of a change from degreasing, cleaning, stripping and wire brushing!

The result - an engine bed all fabricated up and ready for the re-build.

Its basically fabricated out of 75mm x 150mm channel (that's 6" x 3" in old money). The ultimate plan is to rebuild the engine from the bottom up, direct on to the bed plate. Get the gear box setup and aligned and once all finished and tested, the whole shooting match get transported up to the boat builder and welded in to place direct to the base plate.

Once fabricated, it was time to drill the holes for the mounting bolts. 21" apart and 20" along, 3/4" holes. Using the old adage of measure several times and drill only once, checking the diagonals to ensure they where all perfectly aligned, it drilled some 4mm pilot holes.

Before stepping up to eventually drill the full 3/4" holes; I 'dropped' the bottom end with the mounting legs on to the frame. Theoretically, the pilot holes should have been right in the centre of existing 3/4" leg holes.

Were they buggery!

Remove the bottom end, double check all of the measurements on the bed. Yes, everything was true and square. 21" x 20" with equal diagonals.

Check the engine legs (not an easy task with 2/3 cwt of engine bed floating in mid air on the hoist). Hole centres are 21" x 20". Equal diagonals - NO! The engine legs are pi##ed.

Take the legs off the Crankcase. Yep, they're fine. All of the original locating dowels are in place and true and the legs cannot be put on the 'wrong side' because the dowel won't allow it.

Put the legs back on, bolt them all. Re-check the measurements. Still askew!

Because the pilot holes have been drilled, the only answer now is to get a 3/4" hole saw and (after clamping the engine base to the bed) drill down through the leg holes and straight in to the base.

So much for the science of measuring and drilling as per the 'factory measurements'.

Hey Ho!