All:
It was a tough weekend weatherwise with everything from cold and windy to sunny and warm today. On Friday, I got sick in the afternoon with another onset of boatitus hitting me and I left work early to apply some medicine. I laid out the old mansonite paneling from the V-berth on some luan plywood and cut it out. Paul do you have some pictues of V-berths that illustrate the finished project?
I could hardly sleep Friday night thinking about bringing the engines and genset home. I was out of the early and over to the bay. Billy Joe had the engines loaded in my trailer. I tiddied up the Summer Palace and beat it home. It took me the rest of the afternoon to unload the genset and the first engine. In fact, I was lucky, timewise, to get it off the trailer. In my haste, I failed to properly balance the entire afare and ended up with the whole thing hanging with the transome down. After some finiggalin, I got it propperly mounted. On Sunday. I pulled out the 2nd engine, and set it down with the hoist, reposititoned it, and set it on the saw horses. I simply used the fabled come along to pull the other one out, chained it up and set it down too. All went well.
There were some discussion the other day with regard to using a hoist like mine. It is from Harbour Freight and I got it on sale. The legs fold up and it stores in a fairly small space. If the legs do not fold up, it takes up way too much room. The idea of using it on the boat to pull and drop engines and other heavy devises is a good idea, but not a great idea. The hoist is both heavy and top heavy. The six wheels are made of cast iron. I would call it a mankiller because it can become unstable side to side. If common sense and caution prevail it is OK. However, it is too awkard to roll along a pier, lift over and down into a boat's deck and there is too much weight on the front two wheels. If you get one, replace the cast iron wheels with hard rubber ones. It will roll much easier with a load on it. Now it can't be beat for lifting things from the concrete floor and sliding something under the load. There is no other way, I could safely have pulled the motors out and set them up on the saw horses.
I am now looking forward to picking up the other engines next weekend and seeing what I got. By the way here are the serial numbers off the two paragon transmissions. 5262 P441 Z7730L and 3262 P44R 7720R. Someone may know what years they are and this might help with the age of the motors. I am not sure where to look for the serial numbers on the two 454's. I have also included some pictures of the exhaust coming out of the risers. Interesting combination. This helped my boatitus considerably and I will be able to go back to work on Monday. But boatitus is a chronic condition and I expect another relasp next Friday.
Jerry