Out with the Old, and In with the New!

 The Sr20 gazed pleadingly at Wee Dave's rugged, bearded face. They'd been through a lot together, but they both knew its time was up. Mustering all its inanimate persuasion, it tried one last time to reason with him, but it was much too late. He had a new love, and there was only room enough in his boat for one of them. Tear tracks lined his face like the streamers of yesterday's foam party, but he pulled the chain, and the engine rose, as if in resurrection, out of the boat in a catharsis of emotion and strident protest above the mounts that once imprisoned it. It was the end.

It was the end -  of the banging-one's-head-against-a-brick-wall phase of the operation! Sayo-fucking-nara!

Right: Volvo Penta MD 21 A, Left: Stricken Nissan SR20DE

A week earlier I'd been stumbled upon a diesel engine, with low hours since a rebuild, all the appropriate bits, and soft green paint that seemed to whisper "I'm an actual marine engine, use me." I very much intended to, and I was lucky enough to be the only bidder in the auction! $500 later I had it back in the drive, and was absolutely besotted with it!

The first thing to do, as far as I was concerned, was to make up a connection between the driveplate (or failing that, the flywheel) and arrange a connection for the stern drive (takes a universal joint). I cracked off the bell housing, and the drive plate, and found no existing easy way to do it. However, by carefully measuring around the splined insert in the drive plate, I was able to drill holes to attach the UJ, and all was good. I popped the bell housing back on, and arranged for Hamish's A-frame's and block and tackle, and that night Hamish, Euge and I got her in there.

The only tricky part was lining up the bolts and the sterndrive UJ, as I'd welded the bolts to the back of the drive plate, but it turned out that the drive plate was some kind of metal that didn't produce strong welds to the bolts. We quickly unbolted the bell housing and the drive plate, and popped some new, longer bolts in there, and just hope that they'd find enough resistance on the weld-roughened drive plate to tighten properly.

With the extra length of these new bolts, it was a bit easier to line up and thankfully the nuts did tighten up ok. We laid in some new girders (2x1" box steel) and sat the front mounts on those. All in all a much easier mounting system than the SR20. In the end we had to lay another piece of 2x1 across the girders to raise the front, as the sump was hitting a crossmember of the boat's skeleton.

Next, a back mount was required, to take the weight off the UJ. Euge kindly donated a engine mount tie-bar he had spare for his mini, and I got to it the next day. I used the bushings in a short length of 25mm tubing, which bolted to the engine's sandwich plate. An M10 bolt was then welded to that (aligned vertically to take the weight of the engine), and a piece of box section drilled and tapped, to provide a base that could be rotated to allow for height adjustment. A nut is tightened onto the base plate to stop rotation when its adjusted to the right height.

The cross piece for the front mounts was then centred, and welded rigid with the girders. This piece was drilled and tapped once the engine was properly aligned, so the mounting feet could be bolted down. Height adjustment is provided within these feet, so unless I'm mistaken, that takes care of that!

"Now I just have to get it running!" thought the wee fella gladly.

"Just" turned out to be the wrong word. Read on!