How I pulled the engine out in the open

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suntreader
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How I pulled the engine out in the open

Post by suntreader »

Last weekend I got around to pulling the engine out of my Islander 32 project. Condition of the engine is that it turns over with the hand crank just fine, but there were probably half a dozen cans of ether piled around it. Given that clue and my last boat's engine finally overheating from clogged cooling passages, this one is getting torn down, cleaned up, and rebuilt. The engine is a 1992 Yanmar 2QM15.

I've got the boat in my backyard, which is great for just about every possible boat project, except not having the rig up (and at this point not having a mast in any case) I couldn't use the boom as a lifting rig to pull the engine. Add to this the need to hoist the engine up the companionway, get it over the side and 10+ feet down to the ground and there was quite a problem.

My solution was to built a 16' tall by 16' wide wooden gantry. Using the mainsheet tackle as a hoist the engine could come straight up, using two diameters of pipe in side each other as a roller bearing along the beam would get the engine over to the side, and then it could be lowered into the waiting bed of a pick-up to make the trip across the yard to the garage for the rebuild project.

Being the type to over think things I went ahead and did the structural design to see if the timbers I speced would fail or not. According to the way timbers are engineered the top beam of this structure needed to be a 4x16 to support the 500lbs load of the engine. First off, where does one even find a 4x16? That was just silly, so I went back to the old seat-of-the-pants type engineering and used a couple of 2x6s I had lying around. Screwed together they made a credible 4x6 and I couldn't really see a 4x6 snapping under the weight of 500lbs. The reach check came when we had it all up and a couple of us just hung from the beam for a few moments.

Here's how it all went.

Here is one of the two columns. It is a 16' 4x4 with 2x4 bracing and a 4x4 sole.

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Here is the rigging going together, that's my buddy Tim who is working on the project with me.

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Here is a wider view of the whole rig.

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Here the engine is flying free, looking a bit like a fish out of water. Japanese diesel tractor engines just wern't ment to fly. That's me on the left and Charlie on the right, Tim in the middle you met in a previous photo.

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Finally, here is the engine half way down. I have no idea why we took a picture at this moment. I think we were clearing the way for the truck to get in, and it got right in there, lowered the engine right into the bed no problem.

All in all it went very well, no one had an engine dropped on their head, nothing collapsed. The engine is now happily awaiting a major cleaning and rebuilt in the garage on a couple of old boat cushions until the engine stand shows up. In about a year or two we'll do it all again to put the engine back.

The only problem area on the whole day were the prop shaft flange nuts, they were just one ball of metal. I've gotten some pretty rusty flanges apart but this wasn't going to happen, we tried grinding them off but couldn't get a decent angle with the fuel tank directly behind the engine. Ended up having to cut the prop shaft so I'll be needing a new one of those.

I keep having throughts of repowering. Not a new engine, way too much money, but a running take-out 2gm or something along those lines. The 2qm is a fine motor, but it is huge. About 500lbs and it takes up more cabin room than the original P-60 did. A 2gm would save me 250lbs, and a lot of room, not to mention being quieter. The 15hp is plenty for me. I've motored the entire East coast of Florida in an 8000lbs boat with a 9hp Yanmar so I know underpowered, the 15hp will be enough. These days a boat of this size would have more like 30-50hp, which seems crazy to me, I mean the times you'd ever come close to being able to use that much just wouldn't be enough to deal with the fuel consumption, size, etc. of the bigger motor. Maybe if you're turning two 100amp alternators or something that would put some load on it. More than likely the 2qm will go right back in once it is rebuilt and the engine beds are renewed and generally everything is made better than new.

We just ripped out the galley last night. Really the major demo is done now, the galley was pretty bad but the rest of the internal structure is fine, score one for forty year old plywood.

With the initial cleaning, stripping hardware, demo, and engine pulling complete the yard is a mess and the workshop is a wreck with coils of line, spars, PFDs, various electrical and engine parts, etc. I've got to take a few days to get everything squared away, pick up the beer bottles, that sort of thing. The next big project, in the next two weeks, will be building a shed and staging around the boat, I'll ask about that in the shelter section.

Well, did we just get lucky no one was killed with this set up or was this a good approach? I'm curious how others have pulled an engine, I'll have to put it back after all so I'll get another chance to do this again in a year or so.

David
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Post by catamount »

Nice. Thanks for the post. Someday I'll be hauling my 2QM15G out. I already have a rebuilt spare engine, another 2QM15G, on hand ready to take its place. Fortunately, my installed engine looks to be in a lot better shape than the one you just pulled, at least on the outside!

But a couple of comments: I think the 2QM15 was last built around 1980 or 1981, so I don't think your engine could be a 1992 model... Also, the engine does not weigh 500 pounds -- according to my service manual it's only 145 kilograms or 320 pounds (dry weight). If you separate the transmission from the engine, the engine itself is only about 250 lbs., which is consistent with my experience having moved my spare engine around. One could also unbolt the alternator, and maybe the starter motor and water pump to help get the weight down, if that were an issue.

Again, thanks for the post.

Regards,

Tim
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Post by Tim »

suntreader wrote:First off, where does one even find a 4x16? That was just silly, so I went back to the old seat-of-the-pants type engineering and used a couple of 2x6s I had lying around.
The spiked-together 2x6s are far more realistic, and plenty strong enough--as evidenced by your success. The most challenging part is always moving the engine sideways over the side of the boat; your roller arrangement seems to have worked pretty well for that. Good thought.
suntreader wrote:Well, did we just get lucky no one was killed with this set up or was this a good approach? I'm curious how others have pulled an engine, I'll have to put it back after all so I'll get another chance to do this again in a year or so.
I've used a wide variety of similarly knocked-together arrangements over the years. Some were better than others. But Yankee engineering and materials on hand always ruled the day. One thing I did early on was buy a used chain hoist from the rental store. It's a bit of a pain to deal with sometimes, but it is really the right tool for the job.

This post may get a bit long because I had fun pulling up photos of some of the engine hoist arrangements I've used. Bear with me...or better yet, have a laugh at my expense.

Getting the old engine out is always easier than putting back in, mostly because at the early stages the boat and engine are in such poor condition that you need not worry about dinging things up at all. Putting an engine that you care about back into a boat that is either well into the restoration process, or even completely finished, requires much greater care, of course.

With apologies for the small size of these first photos, here is my first ever engine hoist rig, from Glissando in 1999. I used two ladders with a 4x6 beam. As with most of my other un-powerings, I had to reposition the hoist a few times and also had to hoist at an angle to get the engine up from the cockpit and over the rail. These angled loads are always the most dangerous part, as the beam or ladders can move in odd and unexpected ways. No problems this time, though.

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I later installed a used SB12 using a similar arrangement, but this hoist was complicated by the fact that I now had a shelter built around the boat, and had to hoist over the transom rather than over the side. I actually had the ladder in the cockpit fall over during the very early part of this lift--causing no damage to me or the boat, fortunately, but it was a very important lesson. Amateur mistake.

This tippy rig, with a beam extending out through the gable of my shed and onto a ladder that was perched on a pretty significant slope, was by far the worst of all my iterations, at least in my judgement. Don't emulate this.

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I later had to swap this piece of junk SB 12 for a brand new 2GM20F, after the boat had been launched and rigged. I hauled the boat to change the prop and to make the repower easier, and used the boom as a gantry. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of this in action, at least not readily accessible. But the boom was extremely convenient for both lifting out the old and lifting in the new.

For some, this next rig is the most enjoyable. I raised an aluminum ladder next to my truck and secured it in place vertically with lines every which way, and then ran a beam across to a stepladder in the cockpit of this boat, Triton #100 (aka the daysailor). Despite its ridiculous appearance, this rig was safe (using the term with all appropriate disclaimers) and worked very well.

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In 2005, I raised engines into two boats that were in my shop: the daysailor, which was still under construction, and Dasein, Triton 668. Again, I used a pair of stepladders with a 4x6 beam. I don't have a lot of great pictures of this rig in action, but here's one showing the setup on Dasein. The toughest part was getting the engine sideways from midair onto the boats. I wish I'd thought of the rollers.

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I once tried to use what I thought was a strong Maple tree to lift a Chrysler V-8 out of my Lyman 23. Predictably, this didn't work very well. I'm nothing if not stubborn, but this was idiotic. Fortunately, I didn't damage anything.

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In 2006, I had a customer's powerboat in the shop, and bought this 10' commercial gantry for the repower. Unfortunately, this gantry is not tall enough for sailboats, though I have a modification in the works to raise it significantly. As it was, it was just tall enough to allow this big gas engine to clear the cockpit coamings in this boat. The trolley and easily mobile, sturdy crane sure made this particular installation nice compared to the Mickey Mouse rigs above.

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I was back to my old tricks this past December when I removed the engine from Kaholee. The gantry wouldn't work, of course, so I used a big 4x8 beam left over from building my house run between a nearby window sill in the building wall and my ubiquitous orange stepladder on the other side. In this case, since the boat was on a trailer, I could simply drive the boat and trailer straight out from beneath the raised engine, eliminating the need to pull the engine sideways at all.

By the time I put a new diesel back in this boat, I will have my gantry crane modified to allow it to be used. I believe I am officially retiring from using knocked-together rigs of questionable safety for engine pulling, at least when I don't own the boat or engine.

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suntreader wrote:I keep having thoughts of repowering. Not a new engine, way too much money, but a running take-out 2gm or something along those lines.
Well, with a couple years on your hands, you just might locate a decent used GM series or similar. Start looking now and perhaps you'll find just the thing.

Meantime, you may as well tear down and rebuild the 2GM15 with the thoughts of putting it back in the boat--but the experience of rebuilding will be worthwhile anyway, and if you should find another engine that you prefer in the meantime, the 2QM15 will be worth something on the used marked when freshly rebuilt. I don't see a way to lose here.
catamount wrote:But a couple of comments: I think the 2QM15 was last built around 1980 or 1981, so I don't think your engine could be a 1992 model... Also, the engine does not weigh 500 pounds -- according to my service manual it's only 145 kilograms or 320 pounds (dry weight).
I agree. Yanmar was well into the GM series by the early 90s. Maybe you (David) made a typo and meant to write "1982", which would be more accurate.

This link is always helpful in determining the lineage of Yanmar engines. Engine Identification Help
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Post by dasein668 »

Tim wrote:For some, this next rig is the most enjoyable.
I'm pretty sure that's directed at me...

I didn't find any good pictures of the rig we used on Dasein in action either. But I did find this cheery picture of our forum owner:

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Here are a couple of pics of the first half of the process, where we raised the engine into the cockpit before switching to the other rig.

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Post by Figment »

4X16!!! methinks you were using excessive deflection criteria, or applying the weight as a psf number instead of a point-load

My own favorite engine hoisting rig was to use the 2x10 ridge of the stimson shed and my mainsheet tackle to get it up out of the boat, then use the vang tackle to sling it 2' aft, then the mainsheet tackle to sling it 2' aft, and on and on "walking" it toward the end of the shed like spider man until it could drop clear of the transom. Fun stuff!

So Tim, when that tree limb finally failed, was there some laundry work involved?
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Post by Tim »

Figment wrote:So Tim, when that tree limb finally failed, was there some laundry work involved?
No, but there might have been some blue language to be heard.

One nice thing about wood is that it gives you some nice audible indications that its failure threshold is nearing. And the branch sort of "tore" rather than experiencing a catastrophic, instantaneous failure.

Wood is good stuff, people. It's all too easy to lose sight of that in this high-tech world.
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Post by Hirilondë »

"Give me a place to stand on, and I can move the earth." - Archimedes

We Yankees didn't invent ingenuity, but we do have fun with it.
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suntreader
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Post by suntreader »

Wow, Tim's engine is looking almost brand new compared to mine! Now that I have it out I can see the rust isn't as bad as I thought, looks like mostly the injector pump area that has most of the rust, but the underside and transmission are pretty clean.

I had thought the 2qm went out of production way before the nineties, but right there on the reverse gear's housing is this plate:

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Maybe the reduction gear is newer than the engine. I don't remember where I got it the 500 lb figure, some old web site, maybe I messed up the kg to lbs conversion, but it came out to 450 lb as I figured it, the extra 50 was just got good measure. I did take the alternator off before pulling it, mostly to reduce the overall size of the package and so the alt didn't get bumped and bent in the process.

The chain hoist really is the best way to do this, but I didn't have one, and did have a mainsheet which worked just fine too. I know those ladders have worked fine for you Tim, but wow they look rickety!

As for my math, I didn't think I figured it out correctly either, I mean a 4x16 just to support 500 lbs, but I explained my situation to my professor who teaches timber engineering, and she was pretty adamant that I did it correctly and anything less than a 4x16 would break. I really don't think she has much practical experience with wood though.

Having the engine out opens up the aft portion of the cabin and gives me access to under the cockpit to get things cleaned up.

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Given this experience, the groups advice, and thinking about getting this thing back into the boat I think I'll be using a similar gantry next time but will be keeping an eye out for a chain fall. I had several people suggest using a tree limb. Despit having a major slash pine and live oak near-by neither had branches anywhere near where I needed them, too high, too far off to the side. I wouldn't really trust branches anyway.

I had a great site suggested to me by the Yanmar Sailnet list:

http://www.motoren.ath.cx/

It has dozens of engine operation and service manuals listed. They had the 2qm service manual, I printed and bound a nice set to use in the shop.

Dave
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Post by catamount »

Make sure you get the 2QM15 parts manual, too; it is invaluable!

The 1992 must be for your transmission/reduction gear. There should be a similar name plate on the engine itself -- on the other side between the fuel lift pump and the oil dipstick.

Regards,

Tim A.
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