We pulled the engine on Thursday. It took about three hours, including lunch and the usual trying something that didn’t work, and then trying something different.
There were two big hang ups. The first was getting the engine mounts disconnected from the engine. We tried a number of things to get the mounts loose, but between the exhaust manifolds and the ¼ inch plywood bulkheads on either side we couldn’t even get a good look at them let alone get wrenches in there. We had the rear seat out, but that still didn’t allow decent access. Idea number one was to pull the plywood , but it was tabbed in and would be a job to redo. Idea two was to cut access doors into the plywood. I really didn’t want o do that to an all original boat. Looking back, maybe I should have.
Idea three was to pull the exhaust manifolds. We tried a couple of the long bolts and they came out easily, but we couldn’t get the bolts backed out because they hit the bulkheads. Luckily there was enough room to roll the manifolds and the bolts dropped out into the bilge.
Now we could finally get a look at the mounts. Each mount has three parts or brackets. The bottom bracket is bolted to the engine mounting rails with four bolts going through the rail, and a backing plate for the nuts. This bracket has two vertical flanges. The intermediate bracket also has two vertical flanges that index with the lower bracket. Two through bolts and spacers hold the two together. There are slots in the intermediate bracket to allow the engine to be centered in the boat. The upper engine bracket has the rubber vibration absorber and has two vertical flanges to index with the intermediate bracket. They are held together with two bolts, spacers and heavy washers. The engine bracket is bolted to the engine with three bolts and one of them is all but impossible to remove. In fact unless you have worked on a 460 before, you probably wouldn’t find it until the engine was out. Now that I know where it is I think I could make a wrench that would remove it, but I don’t know if I could it back in position and get it started. I have some ideas how it could be done and I’ll post them later if they work.
That led to the second problem. If you don’t disconnect the engine from the top bracket and instead you remove the lower bolts, you still have to raise the engine two or three inches to clear the mount below. We removed the top two bolts on both the engine brackets and gave a light pull up and it was obvious something was still holding the brackets on, so we removed the four bolts holding the engine bracket s to the intermediate bracket. Now we could lift the engine, but when we got above the intermediate mount far enough to slide the engine ahead and disconnect from the jet the spline locked up. More bad language.
Finally we realized we were little higher than we needed and when we lowered it to just touching the top of the intermediate with the engine bracket and pushed the engine forward with a little help from a 2X4, we got it loose. We don’t think this is going to work for realigning the engine with the jet shaft when the engine goes back in. As a number of you told me, the engine has to be pretty much at its original height as it is pulled out or installed onto the shaft.
After we got the engine out and found the hidden bolt, the only way that we felt that the engine could be removed was to either pull the lower bracket bolts holding the bracket to the rails, or getting all three bolts out of the engine bracket. Either one of those would allow the engine to slide forward after a slight lift. I don’t know if you would have access to the bolts through the rail with the engine in. That leaves getting the hidden bolt out of the engine bracket. Once I get the engine back in I’ll see if it’s possible get to either of them now that I know where they are.
Don