Fair Warning: This post contains a lot of photos! As you may already know {from our past moans and groans}, we hauled out our engine to be stripped, serviced and repainted last year which took us months to complete. Here's what we did and some photos of our hard work! Scroll all the way down if you're interested to know what materials we used and some lessons learned as well.
Check out our other posts related to this project in detail:
1 - BEFORE
This is what our 20 year old 50 Hp Yanmar engine looked like before we started working on it. After leaving Raptor at the boatyard in Power Boats, Trinidad for 16 months {unplanned, of course}. Alex turned on the engine for the first time in November 2016; lo and behold we had a runaway engine! (turned out to be a frozen governor in the fuel pump) It was an unforgettable, scary experience, with the engine revving loudly, uncontrollably and smoking -- black smoke/soot and all! I don't know how long it was running for, but those minutes felt like forever; thankfully Alex managed to kill it by shutting off the fuel, and so our journey to "rebuild" the engine began..
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| Our 20 year old 50Hp diesel Yanmar (3JH2-TCE) & SD 31 saildrive |
2 - THE HAUL OUT
Hauling out the engine was not difficult for us. We're fortunate the engine is easily accessible. Throughout the years, we've had to haul it out several times to replace the rusted & failed engine mounts, disintegrated damper plate, to replace the upper gearbox, and mostly to deal with our ongoing rotating saildrive issues. All up, this was the 6th time we have lifted out the engine. With a long piece of solid wood, some blocks of wood, shackles, ropes, the boom, winches and some experience; it was relatively easy. This time around we had a block & tackle from our mechanic which helped tremendously.
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| Pull, Push, Swing, Slide |
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| Resting on blocks of wood |
3 - DISMANTLED ENGINE PARTS
We initially sent the engine away to our local mechanic to get the old paint & rust removed - thought that might go better in a garage than on our cockpit floor. However, things didn't quite turn out as planned and we ended up doing most of the work ourselves (this excludes servicing the fuel pump & injectors - which the mechanic sent away to a specialist). Read 'Hauling Out Our Engine' post. Below are some photos of the dismantled engine parts.
4 - CLEANED PARTS READY FOR SPRAY PAINTING
Cleaning the engine parts to be re-painted was a very tedious and time consuming process {it took us weeks and weeks}. In case you haven't read it, check out our 'Hauling Out Our Engine' post which includes steps on how we cleaned and prepped the engine parts for painting. If you're interested, you can also check out 'How To Clean A Heat Exchanger' post.
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| Before painting |
5 - SPRAY PAINTING ENGINE PARTS
Once the engine parts were clean and ready. The actual painting process was easy. We hired a local contractor to do the spray painting; we set-up a place for the parts to be painted; applied 3 coats of primer and 2 coats of top coat. It took us about 10 days (includes delays due to bad weather) to complete. Read our 'Spray Painting Our Yanmar Engine' post for more details.
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| After painting |
6 - PAINTED ENGINE PARTS
Here are some photos of the painted engine parts. All pretty in a pale yellow. To be honest, it wasn't our colour of choice. We requested the shop to add a little tint to the top coat paint so that we could distinguish it from the primer. They added yellow, what can we say.. it was free! Doesn't look too bad, does it?
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| Cooling Fresh Water System |
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| Main Engine Block |
Next, we upgraded our old rusty engine mounts to Polyflex ones from Australia {we were sick of constantly replacing Yanmar engine mounts that are pretty much rusty almost from new & tend to last only 6-12 months before the corrosion forces the rubber mount off its mild steel plate}. These mounts are moulded from heat cured polymer alloys which are long lasting and oil/fuel resistant {hopefully this means rust free too}. They were a little taller than our old mounts (despite being a supposed identical replacement for the OEM mounts), so we had to make some modifications to the base. More photos on our 'Installing New Engine Mounts' post.
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| Cut, Sand, Level (repeat).. Epoxy, Fiberglass, Sand, Level (repeat) |
8 - REPLACING THE INSULATION
Replacing the sound insulation in the engine bay and engine cover was not part of our initial plan, but our 20 year old insulation was well.. pretty old and already disintegrating; what better time to replace it than now, with the engine out. We bought 2 sheets of reinforced insulation from Budget Marine, cut out all the panels we needed using cardboard templates we made and glued them on using contact adhesive.
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| Engine bay |
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| Engine cover |
9 - GETTING THE MAIN ENGINE BLOCK BACK ONBOARD
Once the engine parts and main engine block were painted and ready for re-assembly, we engaged the help of Power Boats to lift the main engine block back on board with a forklift. We
also set up an A-frame in the cockpit so that we could hang the engine
over the engine bay while we re-assemble the engine.
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| Our engine bay with new mounts (photo before we glued on the new insulation) |
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| Our main engine block hanging over the engine bay |
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| Slim 'gin |
10 - REASSEMBLING THE ENGINE
It was quite satisfying putting the engine back together. A tiny {but great} sense of accomplishment each time a part is installed back on the main block. We replaced all the gaskets, seals and o-rings. We also replaced some hoses, screws, nuts, bolts and washers where necessary. The Yanmar Parts Catalog was essential to identifying parts we needed to replace as well as a guide to re-assemble the engine.
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| Identifying all the gaskets, o-rings and seals we needed to replace |
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| Installing the Flywheel Housing |
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| Note: It's important to plan ahead the order of installing the parts -- we made a couple of mistakes in putting on one part only to realise we had to remove it to put on another part first |
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| Installing the Lubricating Oil Cooler, Turbo Charger & Mixing Elbow |
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| Installing the Cooling Sea & Fresh Water System and Starting Motor |
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| Before installing the Suction Manifold at the top |
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| Installing the Fuel Injection Pump with the help of our mechanic |
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| Connecting the Fuel Injection Lines to the Cylinder Head |
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| Inspecting the gears |
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| Installing the Gear Housing, Alternator Pulleys & Alternator {aligning it was a beeech!} |
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| Connecting the plumbing -- we're almost there |
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| Attaching the Sail Drive -- our custom made Vesconite bushing (on the bottom left) that now sits between the engine & the flange of the upper gearbox - hopefully no more vibration & abrasion & constant destruction of our damper plate? |
11 - OUR YELLOW ENGINE
Finally! The engine is assembled, connected and resting comfortably on its new engine mounts. The good news is that it runs! Having said that, we have yet to replace the mixing elbow (too old & rusty, and developed a crack when we ran the engine) and the Balmar MC-614 alternator regulator (which had a spontaneous meltdown when we connected it to power - its the 3rd one that has died in about 6 years, so we will probably go with a different make when we replace it). In the interim we have re-routed the wiring to the alternator's own internal (backup) regulator. Other than that, it's looking good! {if we do say so ourselves}
WHAT WE USED TO:
WHAT WE REPLACED:
Please note the list below is mainly for our own record purposes and for a 50 Hp diesel Yanmar (3JH2-TCE) engine. But you are welcome to use it as a gauge?
Gaskets
- Above Thermostat: 129470-49550
- Below Thermostat: 129150-49811 ($16.70 TTD)
- Fresh Water Pump: 129150-49550
- Gear Housing: 129470-01510 ($150 TTD)
- Oil Filter System: 129470-35121 ($20.50 TTD)
- Rocker Cover Bonnet: 129171-11330 (we used silicone gasket instead)
- Sea Water Cooling Pump: 129150-01881 ($26.10 TTD)
- Solenoid on Starter Motor: 171008-77571 ($171.90 TTD)
- Sump: [129150-01750 + 129470-35040] or 129198-01750 ($199.60 TTD + $16.70 TTD)
- Top of Heat Exchanger: 120445-44640 ($14.90 TTD)
- Turbo: [129472-18090 + 129472-13520] ($64.80 TTD)
O-Rings
- Rocker Cover Bonnet: 129150-11310 ($61.10 TTD)
- Heat Exchanger: 24321-000750
- Breather Cover: 24341-000500
- Sea Water Pump: 24341-00600
- Cooling Fresh Water System: 129150-42320
- Gear Housing: 24341-000260
- Upper Gear Box Selection Lever: 24341-000550
Seals
- Front Crankshaft Seal ($81.70 TTD)
- Rear Crankshaft Seal ($97.70 TTD)
TIPS & LESSONS LEARNED:
- Plan ahead (if possible) i.e. make sure you have access to spare parts, materials, good weather, not in a rush to be somewhere. We were able to get our mechanic to order in the gaskets, seals and o-rings into Trinidad for us, and that took at least 2 weeks.
- You need to allocate a lot of time to do this (always more than expected). Once the engine is out, you're a sitting duck (so to speak).
- Take photos of your engine before you take it apart, lots of them from every angle. It will be very useful when you re-assemble the engine.
- Not
all parts of the engine should be painted; especially where there are
nuts & bolts because when you tightened them, the paint around it
bubbles up.
- It
was extremely useful to have the Yanmar Parts Catalog. Not only did we
use it to identify the gaskets and o-rings to be ordered and replaced.
We also used it as a guide (as well as photos) to reassemble the engine.
- It's
important to plan ahead the order of installing the parts -- we made a
couple of mistakes in putting on one part only to realise we had to
remove it to put on another part first.
Hope we won't have to do this again in our lifetime, but having done this {with lots of sweat & some tears}, it's not an impossible task. It is very time consuming and we had a lot of trial & error. We hope this post helps anyone considering to do the same.
Feel free to drop us a note if you have any questions or suggestions on what we could've done differently. We'd love to hear from you!
