Pulling The Engine On A Center Cockpit

[lifeofreilly57]

Originally Posted by michaelratinter

My center cockpit has a transparent lexan sole which is removable and provides lots of light to the engine room.

Nice, must give you added incentive to keep the equipment clean.

[roland stockham]

On mine I drain all the fluids and lift the engine vertically stern first, it wont go through the hatch horizontally. (of course not using the coupling flange!! strop round the gearbox)

[Clivevon]

I have a 36 ft centre cockpit boat. My engine was replaced a year ago while the boat was ashore. Various firms seriously came up with different ideas for removing the old engine, such as cutting out the cockpit floor, brute strength and ramps, etc. None inspired confidence.

In the end the job went to my local Beta agent, TS Marine at Universal Boatyard on the Hamble, here in UK. They told me they would use a strong metal C frame suspended from a mobile crane. They do this all the time apparently.

The C frame is manouvred through the companionway hatch so the bottom of the C is in the engine room & the top is in the cockpit. The engine is attached to the bottom of the C frame, lifted up, forward, up & out.

Wish I'd been there to see it. As far as I am concerned it was a trouble free job for a very fair price.

[Clivevon]

No damage to my newly refurbished interior, either - I think they used a lot of cardboard padding?

[Martkimwat]

Don't know if it would help but I had a similar problem on my boat and could not cut the space above the engine which was part galley top, part companionway step so I had fabricated a three side 'C' bracket made of 2"x2" thick wall box section steel tube with lifting points on the ends of the two arms. allowed me to lift the engine using a chain lift on a jury rigged rolling gantry in the cockpit until it was out of the engine box and forward into the saloon, then swapped the 'C' bracket out and lifted it straight up and used the roller gantry repositioned to drop the engine onto the pontoon. I used another pice of the thick wall box section tube as the gantry on 4 2x4 legs and a piece of 2"Dia Delrin rod as a roller. You might need to use a heavier box section material say 3"x2" due to the heavier weight of your engine. Depends on how much reach you need. Mine was good for 30" reach under the cockpit to the centre of the engine.

[Cheechako]

I added a Freeman watertight aluminum hatch above the engine on my 30 footer. It did sit proud of the cockpit floor by about 3/8" or so though.
Deck Hatches, Freeman Marine Equipment, Inc. provides the finest marine and specialty closures available. Custom fabricated doors, hatches, portlights and windows.

[S/V Alchemy]

Originally Posted by lifeofreilly57

I have a Perkins 4-108 in my Cheoy Lee 47 Pedrick Center Cockpit, I currently have it here on my property for a refit, the first order of business is to pull the motor. I have it pretty much disconnected everything and am pulling all the heavy parts off, like the jacketed exhaust, alternator, refrigeration pump, etc, etc.
I have a couple ideas on how to get it out of the engine compartment but am looking to see if anyone here has done something similar and has a better idea. I was once a millwright/rigger in a past life a long, long time ago so I've moved heavy objects before but the space is limited.
Any ideas or tricks you've seen would be appreciated, anything that makes it easier. Once out of the engine compartment I can get it out of the hatch, but getting it out will be a little bit of work.
ANy suggestions?

Yes. I have a pilothouse and it involves removing the roof to put the new 750 pound Beta 60 engine in and then fabricating a gantry to hoist it up and down on a chain lift while I had mounts and stringers welded in and zeroed in the alignment.

A one-ton chain lift was a huge help. I estimate for various reasons that I had that block up and down about 40 times before I finally bolted it in place.

This post on my refit blog may therefore help.

The world encompassed: Arise, O diesel! Alignment awaits!

[KP44]

I replaced the Ford Lehman 85hp in my Kelley-Peterson 46 center cockpit cutter with an Inveco 100hp. The cockpit sole lifts out and opens the engine room to lift the engine straight up.
I don't know about Cheoy Lee cockpits but they are also Formosa-built and might be the same. I used a hydraulic bottle jack (on a cut-to-fit 4x4) to break the cockpit sole free from the caulking and sealants.
Hope this helps.

[KP44]

Originally Posted by lifeofreilly57

Although cutting the floor out of the cockpit is a good suggestion the cockpit in this CC is not that big, cutting out a hatch large enough to pull the motor directly would mean having to remove the steering gear every time you want to pull the hatch, I'm kind of restricted in that way.

thanks for all the feedback so far, I really wish I could cut a hatch into the cockpit, it would be handy in other ways.

I need to pull the pedestal and all steering gear to remove the cockpit sole. But how often do I do that? I have only needed it once; to replace the engine. At the same time, I replaced the port fuel tank. (And doubled my fuel capacity.)

[GILow]

To the OP, not sure if your setup is the same as ours, but here goes.

We have a 420 kg (925 lbs) engine and transmission and I was lucky enough to have the installation procedure described to me by the PO.

To remove it I slid it forward into the cabin on a set of aluminium rails made from some square hollow section pieces I had lying around. To get it to slide I used the mast support post (suitably strong against sideways forces due to its design) and a 6:1 pulley block.

From there it is lifted straight up using a chain hoist using the small hatch that was installed in the deckhouse roof for this very purpose. Once level with the cockpit floor a set of rails are placed below it, from the cockpit floor, to slide it backwards into the cockpit from where it is lifted from the boat.

So, I my question to the PO, is does that sort of "Z" maneuver solve the problem?

[pcmm]

We pulled our engine ( Perkins 4-154) last spring. We were able to remove a bulkhead at the aft of the engine room which help with the extraction a lot. Still we unbolted every part we could down to the bare block and flywheel. To remove from the engine room we rigged up a gantry using 1.5" black pipe and some come-a-longs. we winched the block up and then aft to under the companionway. From there we had a crane just life the engine out the aft companionway. to install the new engine we just reversed the procedure (minus the disassembly as the new engine was smaller for the same HP)

[lifeofreilly57]

OK, so I've seen a few different ways to do the same thing, mostly applied to a particular challenge. In my case it looks like sliding the engine forward onto the salon floor would work, once there I could pull it up through the hatch, I would have to hold it slightly forward until it cleared edge of the engine compartment but not so much that a chain run from directly above would run into the leading edge of the hatch.
Getting it out to the salon floor will be the majority of the work.
I've been looking at it the last couple of nights and actually pulled out a tape measure to see how much clearance I had. I will be using a lot of cardboard and shipping blankets to protect the surrounding woodwork just in case. The motor must have been pulled at some time in the past because the generator is newer than the motor and is behind it, there's no way you could get it in there otherwise. Unfortunately the previous owner bought the boat with the generator already installed and I have not been able to find contact info for the original owner, it was originally documented to an LLC.
Looks like I've got more work to do in cramped quarters, ah, the joy of boat ownership, good thing I've got a warped sense of humor.
Thanks for the feedback, it's given me several ideas that might work for me, like usual it's a combination of tactics that make for a solution.
In my previous job I had the joy of having the engineers who designed equipment come to the factories where it was installed, then have them try to work on it as part of their "training", maybe that might be a good idea to apply to marine architects. It sure did provide a different perspective for many of those junior engineers and a lot of laughs for the maintenance people who had to maintain the equipment they designed.