Fitting a Yanmar and Aquadrive

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Engine beds continued:

The first step was to remove the sides of the conpanionway structure - I marked out as carefully as I could and cut with a jigsaw. I am keeping these bits to make the engine box later. I also cut out the aft section of grp cockpit sole, using a Dremel fitted with a thin cutting wheel. Compared with an angle grinder it is slower and I used about 10 of these little discs, but it gives a very fine cut and much less dust. I had a vacuum cleaner nozzle positioned very close to the cut, as well as goggles and those thin surgical rubber gloves.

I made the engine beds deliberately deeper than necessary so I could trim them to the correct profile and height. I was far too cautious - made them far too deep and wasted some ply, but that's better than making them too small. I bedded them down onto a very generous thickness of epoxy (SP Systems 106 and microfibres), using the excess to form a fillet on each face. I used a very thin shaped batten to reach inside each of the 'box' structures and smooth the epoxy into a radius.

Three layers of 600 gsm biaxial cloth layed up with epoxy resin was used to glass the beds in - the original grp was cleaned with an abrasive disc on the Dremel followed by a good swab down with acetone. The Aquadrive thrust mount was given four layers both sides.

This bit of the hull will be difficult to reach when the engine is in place, so after a thorough clean with white spirit and acetone I gave it a couple of coats of Blakes bilge and locker paint.

(More of this to follow - work in progress Feb 10, 2007)

www.corribee.org - inboard engines