Erin and I went out to the Alberg early this morning and we pretty much kicked ass all day with some excellent team work. The result? The Volvo Penta MD11c engine is no longer a part of the Alberg and now lives on a nice little pallet in the shed.
The first job was building the base for the crane. The crane is a “truck bed crane” that I borrowed from work. I have also been keeping my eye on dumpsters for about six months now and whenever I see some quality wood or a good sturdy pallet being thrown away I grab it and bring it out to the farm. We loaded all this wood up onto the boat and got to work!
The base is a piece of scrap plywood from Erin’s Mom’s recent house renovation – Thank you Kathy! On top of that we laid a few 2X6 boards to make the base for the 4X4 beams. We then laid 2X6’s crosswise over the 4X4’s which created a sandwich – 4X4’s in the middle clamped down securely by the 2X6’s. This is important because we had to swing the engine about 280 degrees and the 4X4 that the crane was on could not twist at all or everything would come crashing down!
As an added safety measure we utilized our two primary winches:
Once the crane was set up we tested it by having Erin use it as a swing. Why we didn’t take a picture of this I will never know! 😦 After the swinging festivities ended we pivoted the crane to the engine and clipped it on. Erin began cranking it up while I removed the only two bolts holding the engine in place (I had removed all the others ones last week).
Erin continued to crank and I pulled the engine out and twisted it so it wouldn’t damage anything on its way up. Finally it arrived into the daylight again after more than 30 years!
Swinging it around was a bit of a pain because we had to temporarily set it down on some 2X6’s braced across the cockpit and readjust the crane to its fully extended position to clear the side of the boat. I then cranked it up again while Erin guided it overboard at which point I carefully cranked it down.
Woo hoo!! Engine out!
Nice work! Deep breath…no damage!😀
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haha I KNOW!!! Our main concern was not damaging ourselves! Then, of course, we were worried about damaging the boat! It was close when she went over the side and swung back in towards the hull but Erin had some padding in the way so it was all good 😉
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