Propulsion!

I smoked many a wistful cigarette by stern of the boat, looking into the engineless abyss and wondering, how, and when, it would ever be filled :'( . After doing this for almost 10 minutes, I remembered that a friend had gifted another friend and I his old Nissan Bluebird in exchange for removing it from his property, what luck!

My buddy Rob posing with the SR20DE from the Bluebird

That weekend we popped over to where we were storing the car, and we swiftly removed it using a handy tractor that is also stored there. I then borrowed an engine hoist from a friend who was borrowing it from our old school, and once the dust from all these givings and borrowings had cleared I found myself crudely welding a universal joint to the torque converter and welding in mounts, only to pronounce it mounted but a few short days later.

Considerable time was spent making frames to attach to the engine, since this was a FWD car and the mounts that came with it were ultimately unsuitable for the longitudinal mounting. 2x1" girders were used along the framing of the boat to take the weight, and  the two were joined with rubber mounts from a Nissan Silvia. Cranking the engine suggested that all aspects of measurement were satisfactory, and the job was considered done.

In my enthusiasm and drive to get it done while there was still some summer left, I overlooked a lot of factors surrounding the engine issue, including the suitability of the engine itself, and these will be discussed in more detail later. I should stress, lest anyone happen upon this page and decide to do the same thing, is that the hull should be properly sealed (IE with varnish or epoxy etc) before something big and oily like this comes near it, and that the criteria met in making a good car engine are very different from those in a boat. That's not to say a car engine can't be a good boat engine, but many facets must be considered.

Read on for interior!