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Yorklyn,
Like you I have been faced with the repower question and what it boiled down to is I am going to put reconditioned gas replacements in next year and keep the $$ in my pocket for trips and more vacation time with the family. I figure I can do this at least 4 or 6 times for the price of diesel repower, and its easy, especially in these old boats.
Dont let the bulkhead scare you its really pretty simple to replace and maybe you dont have to replace it from keel to deck, chances are the rot started at the limber hole and only goes half way up. I am in process of finishing a complete stringer rebuild on my f32 and the total will be under $3000 for everything. This includes replacing the forward engine bulkhead but instead of cutting out the whole thing I only did the first foot near the limber hole and about 2 feet up behind the refrigerator then filled the butt joints with epoxy and tabbed each piece together with fiber glass.
Mac32,
It sure looks like you have been busy from your pics!! Wow! How did you go about educating yourself before attempting your project? I have a few fiberglass boat repair books but have only glanced through them at this point. The only reason I think I'm intimidated is lack of good reference material. Seeing someone tackle a project like yours sure got me motivated! Thanks! Did you just remove the rotted wood from the stringers and reused the fiberglass "tabing"? I like the Idea of leaving the tabing as a "reciever" for the new wood.
Mac32 I'm impressed, thanks for sharing your project with me. I'm working on getting some pictures of my boat to show everyone my "Money Pit"
Take Care,
Todd Pote
1987 10 Meter mid cabin
Double Pote-N-Sea
My 10 Meter is an express, not a mid cabin. There are significant differenes which may be to your advantage.
First, with the mid-cabin your engines are further aft. To achieve this they raised the deck. That may allow you additional vertical clearance that I did not have and may allow you to consider several different engines. My height restrictions allowed only the Yanmar or the Volvo. No way to get a Cat in that engine room for lack of clearance.
With the mid-cabin having the engines further back your shafts are shorter and you only have one strut per shaft to deal with. However with that shorter distance, your shafts are also closer to the hull than on the non mid cabin vessel. Trojan addressed this problem by making the props smaller but coupling the engine to a differnt ratio transmission, so your smaller pops are spinning faster than in the non-mid cabin vessel.
In my installation I used the Hurth downangle transmission to get the shaft angle back to where it was with the 454's.
Fresh 454's would be nice if you changed out all the anciallary components. By that time however your cost is higher than the cost of the 8.1 New Crusaders. That's where I was.
When I compared the 8.1 total cost to the Yanmars, I was only looking at about a 40% difference in the cost of the engines. The labor was the same and my generator was already a diesel. These issues made my decision much easier.
By the way, one of my 454's engines had 2600 hours on it. It was very ready to retire. Actually she was running on borrowed time.
RWS,
Sounds like you went through the same decision process that I'm going through now. I haven't priced out all the anciallary components but I was thinking they would close to gap in cost between refurbishing the old engine and adding a new powerplant.
I am however jelaous of the repower decision you made. You have a great boat!
Thanks Again!
Todd Pote
1987 10 Meter Mid Cabin
Double Pote-N_Sea
1992 Scout 15.5 Center Console
RJ
I'd just rather see R&D money go into making diesel fuel out of soybeans. Diesel fuel has more btu's per gallon than any kind of gas, and has some lubricity in it....gas is an abrasive. Europe is way ahead of us in going to small common rail diesel vehicles which are super efficient. Auto makers here are still catering to the SUV drivers (I'm one of them) that like big and fast away from the the stoplight. Just my opinion, everybody has one!
Danny
1980 F-36 with 6BTA 250 Cummins enjoying the Sounds and coastal waters of North Carolina
