engine bed

[Turtle1974]

Hi

whats everyone's idea on an engine bed, i am currently re-fitting a steel cruiser
it has a 120hp ford and Vdrive, the engine bed is 100mm angle iron then hardwood with the rubber mount attached to the wood, that i want to do is replace the wood with steel then attach the engine mounts to that ??

[Sailmonkey]

Get rid of the wood!!!!

[jimbunyard]

Someone likely added or specified the wood for sound attenuation reasons. It may or may not be a good idea to get rid of it, you might have to change the motor mounts or find another 'attenuating' material to go between the steel and the motor mounts if some sort of resonance(s) is/are built up...

[Turtle1974]

It has four rubber mounts that the engine sits on so I am hoping it should be fine to replace the wood with steel box section

[Zach]

If the wood is not rotten and you aren't eating cutlass bearings and shaft packing don't mess with it

Angle Iron is used because it is easy to bolt, clamp, and weld level and in plane to the shaft alley. It is built in place low in height reference to where the engine needs to be. The wood on top allows you to plane a long taper in to correct any misalignment between the two sides while still remaining low to the engine mounts so that you can bring you can raise the engine to bring the shaft coupling into line.

If you replace the wood with an untapered steel box and end up high, because the wood was tapered... Then there is no easy solution to go lower without going back to wood.

It doesn't take many thousandths of an inch to have big problems with shaft wear if you end up high.

Cheers,

Zach