The end of the old paint

Another ebay find, 1 and a 1/2 E60 evinrudes.. a nice chap in Airdre sold me these.. A fair bit of work needed.. main unit at the front has a holed piston, other powerhead/casing I think is quite siezed.. all needs to be stripped, cleaned, measured, painted, gaskets and a lot more.. will be a background job for the next few weeks..

A large cork sheet, courtesy of ebay and £10... Will remake gaskets for powerhead from this, just to see if the engine will run ok to begin with.. Useful stuff to have around, glad I got plenty,,,,

Finally, after a few hours pain, the black has gone, and good ridance....

The orange is the old coat and the yellow is the Gelcoat... I think my earlier worries were false..

2 Brand new seats! they are the colour I wanted the boat to end up, near enough! cheap and seem perfect size for a small boat.. will get two more to face backwards.. only thing, I feel very high up in them as they are! The slightly less raked screen may help here, and also I may make the bases tilt back a touch.. any comments on seat height/ person height welcome as I have no idea..

its hard to see.. odd that the orange is in the middle of the sanded area, I thought it was above the light-brown, assuming the orange is the gel coat?

The left over black, peels off in sheets in places.. however, some heavy sanding has gone through black, red, and orange to the colour below, in one small place.. as of tonight most of the black is still on there too.. Couldn't risk painting with such a dark colour left on the boat.. hope I havent made a big error here..

The first ever time I have heard this run....
Problems with the gaskets leaking, causing cooling water and Exhaust to mix, I think..thicker gasket material on way, to see if it fixes problem.. sounds meatier than it does in real life!..


If the screen was made from something solid, it would stand up by itself.. the top is not a curve, but I will modify the diagram to make it one, before the drawing goes off to the plastics factory. I may yet cut a ply version to be sure..

However, when in position, its pretty close.. It may not 'lay back' as much as it could, making it taller, but that may not be a bad thing.. (see above)

A change of tack, i decided to print the screen that a fellow boat owner had given to me as X / Y coordinates... office roll printer very handy :) - this screen was for a shakespeare clubman, slightly different from my boat.. I cut this carefully, leaving the small tranparent polygons at each end of the shape.

The gaskets, paper was too thin for the warpage.. two thick ones would have been better than 4..

Warpage on the engine seal plate.. I did a 40 Mile trip during lunch, to a engineering shop who normally do Headskimming, thinking this would be a walk in the park, they wouldn't touch it :( then I tried hours of rubbing on wet/dry on a flat surface and made little inroads.. in the end I tried doubling up on the gaskets.. its worth pointing out that at this point, the engine had never run (in my possesion)..

the powerhead undertray, for want of a better word..


most of engine on table, a quick clean of the bits in the parts washer followed..


this was hard to turn.. all cleaned and greased, much better (pic is before)


this is the selection problem.. just on the left, where it's blackened, it's very stuck in the casing.. no gears from this point on.. the first job tomorrow is to free that part.. under-use is probably the main cause, but what a dismantle needed to get to all this.. maybe I could have freed it up without the other work, but I didn't know what was in here until now..



I thought this bent selector shaft was causing the selection problem, but it turns ok when back in the casing.. going to ignore it.. the die cast bit will break (more) if I try to straighten, and it's doing no harm really.. (later on I tried to straighten it, but my limited workshop stopped me, it's a lot better now thought)


the snapped bolt.. also shown is the top of the R-N-F selection mechanism.. a long steel rod that runs down, in two peices, all the way through the mid and lower outboard, and nudges/persuades, the cogs below.. this rod is stuck fast in the outboard.. it's finally coming out now.. this whole engine is about things being stuck! so far only two victims, the Powerhead bolt and 1 threaded transom clamp thing.


this view was to see the shape of the gasket needed.. going to be hard to get one, engine is still an unknown model Suzuki 2 stroke twin,estimates vary between 25 and 40 HP, it seems quite old..


I took this pic so I could remember stern throttle position, as I wont have a steeringwheel/forward throttle control, for this boat before testing of the engine begins... sunburnt now :(



lift-off!




A nice sunny saturday and not much else to do.. decided to pull motor apart to see why I cant get neutral or reverse.. I began by carefully removing the casing to powerhead bolts.. these are all 6mm threaded into, I guess, aluminium.. all felt springy and got tighter the more I tried to undo them.. I previously took some time trying to spray them and loosen a bit (the ones I could get to the other end of). Today, I used heat, and I finally just went for it.. all but one came out, the snapped one is no problem to remove.. after that i thought the easy bit was ahead.. taking the powerhead up from the casing...
I tried every nice gentle way for about 3 hours.. completely beaten I rang local boatyards.. I wasn't missing any tricks, 30 + years had welded the engine and casing together!

I gave up the softly approach, and picked the back of the boat up by the powerhead, using my crane, walked away and got a beer, expecting the boat to fall an inch onto the trailer, and the powerhead to be swining in the breeze...

30 mintues later I did what I never thought I would have to.. a huge mallet and a blunt flat driver :(

The gearbox... it's stuck in 'Forwards' but nothing wrong here.. very simple and works perfectly. The gearlever seems to be siezed, high up..to rectify this I think the middle engine case needs to be lowered, but the bolts holding it to engine feel siezed and they are going to snap.. I guess steel and Aluminium.... gave up and went to do some work on the small kawasaki 250, after a 10 month layoff...!

Outboard fuel pump... seems to be fine, gave a clean and will try it again tomorrow. Need a priming bulb to help.. have tried running engine from a gravity fed small tank, but it's flooding despite the float needle being ok..

Rye in a thunderstorm

Next project? :)


neglected small hull


backing a trailer into a high-tide rivermouth, even with a 4x4, can cause problems...




from the slipway




:( 375K, I googled it.. http://www.phillipsandstubbs.co.uk/site/go/viewParticulars?propertyID=89402

Rye Harbour, in a storm...


Decided on a sunny morning, to take a trip to the South coast, down to Rottingdean, to eventually end up at Romney Marsh to grab a boat fuel tank, two waterskis, and a steering wheel... It was a pleasent hot sunny day, ending in a very atmospheric storm.. A nice house for sale almost next to the boat-launch but a few hundred grand out of my range ...