First, I want to thank everybody who responded when I asked for thoughts on replacing Dolphin's engine beds. The Yanmar 2GM came out nicely, sat on the (protected, of course) cabin floor for a week and is now sitting on nice new stainless steel beds and new mounts. Your contributions made a huge difference to me.
(As an aside, I managed to decapitate a bolt and spent two -- count 'em -- two days drilling it out clumsily enough that I had to redrill and tap to the next size up) My main worry had become the alignment but, unless I'm missing something, I was lucky enough to get it right without the huge effort I'd anticipated (and will be checking as the new mounts settle, of course). I'm thinking of inserting one of those plastic Drivesaver devices. The propeller turns freely even when the shaft is slid back several inches so space shouldn't be a problem. Found a crack in the silencer, too. Probably caused by overheating when the cooling pump impeller went off duty last summer. Oh, and the oil feed pipe to the cylinder heads (valve gear?) is a little corroded, so that needs replacing. Here's the question that popped up, though: The gearshift control cable is attached to one of two holes on the little stub lever on the transmission. This seems to be to allow for different throw distances on remote controls. It's entirely my fault for not paying attention and checking the connection, but my helper attached the gearshift control cable to the wrong hole so that it was moving the lever less than it should. I fired up the engine and was so pleased (surprised, actually) at the lack of vibration/alignment error and the instant success of the fuel system bleeding that it took a while for me to remember that there had seemed to be a hesitation in the propshaft starting to turn as I put it into gear. Well, the short story is that I had run the thing up in forward and reverse, left it running for a few minutes and shut down. The problem is that I wonder if I've cooked the gearbox. With the engine stopped and the gear set to forward, I can turn the shaft by hand (against a felt resistance) in the astern direction -- it does, however, seem to be solidly locked against the engine in the forward direction. The reverse is true if the gear is set for astern. In other words, the engine seems to be solidly pushing the shaft in the correct direction, but it isn't locked against reverse turning. I'm hoping (really hoping!) that this is the behavior that's referred to when we're told to leave the gear in reverse -- not forward -- while sailing to lock the propeller in place, and it's how things should work. I suppose that now I know how to pull the engine it's not such a huge worry, but it would be really nice not to need to pull off the gearbox. Thanks again, Giles Morris Vancouver 25 Dolphin. _______________________________________________ http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/montgomery_boats
