While my Bride has been busy selling things, I have been plugging away on boat projects. Just as a quick review of what the big project is this year, I am doing the following:
- Replace the dampener plate
- Replace the motor mounts
- Replace the stuffing box with a dripless adapter
- Replace the bronze shaft with a stainless steel one
- Replace the cutlass bearing
- Replace any original hoses left on the engine
- Cleaning & rebuilding the strainer
The dampener plate replacement went fine, here is another photo to let you know how lucky we were that we were still able to use our engine this season.
Yup. Barely holding on.
Putting on the PSS dripless adapter became a bit of an issue. There is a hump 
on my model of C310 that doesn’t exist on others. This hump is just fiberglass and resin in the area that was hand laid. But it made the area between the hump and the shaft log too tight for the PSS bellows. So I had to grind some of this material away with my Dremel then reseal the area with some epoxy. I then painted this area with a little Interlux Bilgekote since it will be hard to get below the PSS in the future.
Finally I put the PSS on and slide the new shaft into place.
And the new shaft in the new cutlass bearing. Zero play, perfect fit.
Finally, with the help of my friend Frank, the motor went back in place on the new motor mounts.
Here is a close up of the new front mounts with the spacer plates made out of stainless steel thanks to my cousin’s machine shop.
To finish the project I need to align the motor and the shaft, reconnect a few stray wires and hoses and reinstall the line cutter and prop. Hopefully the weather will let me tackle that this weekend and call this project complete. The strainer is still in pieces in my garage but I want to hit the marine consignment store before I go any further on this strainer. I might change from a Perko to a different brand.
Next on the list will be making some modifications to my raw water pump Just changing out some fittings for a better fit. I think my drive belt is hitting one fitting slightly. Then it will be electric time. I want to move my small 300 watt inverter from the hanging locker (PO used it for the TV) to the navigation station. I will install a 12volt outlet near the hanging locker to get ready for a new, 12 volt TV. I also want to put a 12 volt outlet or two in the cockpit for charging the iPad and maybe run some LED strip lights for the cockpit.
We also decided to ditch the foam pads for the back birth. We don’t have people spend the night often. When we do it’s usually drunken friends who usually just sleep in the cockpit. So we took out the two foam pads and replaced them with a air mattress. The Coleman queen air mattress fits the area well and can be stored much easier. What to do with the old foam pads is still up for debate.
While I have been doing this, my Bride has been working to purge the house and getting it ready for the market. Now, if we can only get my buddy George to list it already.
svsmitty.wordpress.com 
February 3, 2014 at 5:15 pm
Sounds like you’re making some major progress! Well done
February 3, 2014 at 6:27 pm
Trying. Biggest step is we have to get rid of our house! I never thought I would want so much to be homeless 😉
February 3, 2014 at 8:25 pm
Your engine/shaft upgrades are looking great! How do you like those Bilgekote fumes! Your gonna love that dripless stuffing box. I’m sooo jealous of your engine access.
Hey, now I know where to crash if I’m wandering around drunk in your part of the woods. But please don’t leave the LEDs on.
February 4, 2014 at 12:17 pm
Thanks. The engine access was a big selling point to me. I didn’t want to have to deal with some of the access issues that I see on typical motor rooms. Adding the access panel in the back made it easy to get to almost every inch of this engine.
Any time your in the area, look us up.
February 6, 2014 at 2:43 am
my mechanic talked me out of the dripless system, so curious how you like it. His point was at least with a stuffing box you can tighten it a little if it leaks too much (ours barely drips) whereas if the dripless system’s bellows fails… grab a bucket! It was mainly because we are crossing the pacific and will be out of reach of repairs and parts a lot of the time and the stuffing box is an easy fix mostly!
the engine and install looks great, wish I had a cousin with a machine shop!
February 6, 2014 at 3:29 pm
I went back and forth on this decision. I don’t really like stuffing boxes and never could seem to get them set right so they don’t leak without it heating up too much. The hose on the stuffing box needed to be replaced so I was doing all of the other work already and we really wanted a dry bilge. After doing a fair amount of research I came to the conclusion that most of the stories of failures were from incidents that would have cause a stuffing box to fail too (most common were keeping them too long, plus 10 years, and heavy objects like tool boxes hitting them). So it came down to being a dollar decision and it was about $200 difference.
Now that I have the split coupling, in a worst case scenario I could install a new PSS or stuffing box in a pinch. So many people that have them seem to really like them. So I went with it. We shall see how that goes.
Thanks for the comments on the work so far. Having a cousin with a machine shop has been great. This is the 4th special project he has done for me. He can’t do much on tubing or shafts (despite trying to talk him into a tube bender and lathe) but he has two laser cutters and one of the big hydrocutters. Lots of scrap stainless and aluminum. Hasn’t charged me yet. We normally just trade favors. He is in his 3rd year of owning a 30 foot Sea Ray. He is now having some electrical problems that I will go help him with and install a new chart plotter for him. The tough part is figuring out what specialty parts I need before we leave the area and I won’t be able to get him to make me parts as easy.