Engine Compartment/Beds and Iron floors

[bob mitchell]

       After you pull the engine, the engine compartment in hull #113 looks like this, with a fiberglass catch basin for the oil between the engine beds, and with the motor mounts lagged into the top of the beds.  

 Underneath the basin it looks like this.   The engine beds are fastened through the iron floor and the frames below them at four locations. The iron "floors" are notched into the top layer of the apron, which for most of the boat is the 6 layers of 3/4" marine plywood ( 1 foot wide) that runs just about the full length of the boat. However, in the engine room there are only five layers (with the sixth layer stopping under floor 23, at the engine compartment fwd bulkhead, and resuming under floor 29, where the shaft emerges from the apron ), Because of height restrictions there are flat iron bar floors (instead of wood floors)  going across and resting in a 3/8" notch cut into the fifth layer, and extending outward on top of the lower frame members on each side. The iron floors themselves were 3/8" thick and fastened through the apron with countersunk flat head machine screw, about 1/2" in diameter, and countersunk and bolted on the underside of the apron. The motor mounts themselves were lagged through the engine bed. The engine bed itself was 8 3/4" fwd. tapering to 3 3/8" over 45 3/8" length, width a thickness of 2 3/4".  However, as in the photo, the total height of 8 3/4 is made of two pieces, with the top 1" piece hole drilled for the engine bed bolts countersink.  The engine beds taper from front to back, and also have an anle cut on the bottom so they will be vertical when resting on the sloping frames. The engine mount lags went through both. The two bolts in front of the shaft coupling, and two behind it,(you have to push the picture around) are the tops of the threaded rods that run all the way down to the bottom of the deadwood through side groves cut in the deadwood, but covered by the 3/4" plywood layer that surfaces each side of the deadwood. There is no lead keel in this area, so these threaded rods hold the deadwood on. The single large bolt in the center, forward of the shaft coupling, is the last of nine 7/8" bronze keel bolts.