The old clunker had many problems:

Overheated at more than 2000 RPM

Rusty Engine Mounts, ‘lag bolts’ were just coach screws into softening wood bearers

Fresh Water pump housing corroded through, leaking water

Blowing lots of black smoke, not starting well needed injectors serviced

We still had the original engine wiring harness

The transmission was using oil and VERY hard to shift!

To repair was not really economic, so…

We decided to replace the engine with a new one. For us it made sense to swap in a new

Kubota D902 based Beta 25Hp rather than change to another brand or a more powerful

engine. We had been managing with about 15Hp tops for quite a while, and we FAR prefer

to sail than to motor. We can generally keep moving quite well in light airs and don’t like the

noise of the engine for any longer than necessary. 25Hp would be 5 or 10 more than we

were used to and would push us along at hull speed on flat water. We avoided costly and

time consuming modifications to the engine bay.

We like the Beta as all the essential bits for servicing are accessible, and there are some

nice touches such as a built in manual oil pump for changes and a stainless exhaust riser

and very few external hoses compared to the old Universal.

Yikes! A 3000 NM voyage to Fiji and New Caledonia made the hole in the Fresh water

pump reappear and a year of sitting around created this mess!

The engine mounts did not inspire confidence… Even with heaps of WD40 they were in a

bad way after a year on the mooring.

Clunky heat exchanger, hoses everywhere, hard to service. Next to impossible to check the

transmission dipstick!

So we allowed ten days or so on the hard (took 14 in the end) and got started…

It was a relief to get the dirty old engine out.

and clean up the engine beds. I decided to cut 50mm holes in the beds (which are hollow)

to enable insertion of through bolts from underneath the mounts instead of the coach screws

from the top down into wooden bearers. You can see these holes beside the front bearers

on the inside face. Fuel soaked wood was drilled out and filled with epoxy. Also the

indentations worn in the mounts gel coat were filled and coated with Fibreglass cloth.

The new engine was lifted in with the main halyard, no problems

The “Engineers” set up the alignment and drilled pilot holes for the bolts. I then enlarged

the holes to 12mm and fitted 8mm through bolts via the circular holes and epoxied them in.

Unfortunately the “Engineers” had botched the original alignment which gave major

problems later. Also when reinstalled the engine sat near the top of the engine mounts. A

cursory reading of the installation manual clearly said a DTI should be used to get the

parallel alignment right (they did not do this) and the engine should be sitting near the middle

of the mounts. I had to point this out.

So they measured we needed a 25mm packer under the mounts to achieve this, out comes

the engine again.

There was just enough room for a flexible coupling and a dripless lubricated shaft bearing

It turned out the packing block Portside Aft interfered with the gear selection which is on the

Port side on the Beta, compared to Stbd on the Universal. Out came the engine again, and

the offending block removed.

The aft engine mounts were through bolted by poking the nut and washer in the small gap

under the cabin sole pan where the hoses disappear into. Unable to reach the forward bolts

I compromised and used coach screws for the front of these mounts.

I opted for the waterproof (push button) engine starting panel with a kill switch just inside the

companionway. This enables easy starting without going below, and there is no key to lose

overboard! Should a wave fill the cockpit the panel should remain functional. (We go

offshore, this was a bit of a worry.)

Also we got an optional temperature gauge, mounted in the coaming on the port side where

we can see it better than on the panel.

We also had a 70 amp alternator upgrade. I’m not sure I would bother with the expense in

hindsight, it runs at 50 or 60 amps then drops back to less than 40 within a minute or two,

even when our 300 AH battery bank is quite low.

Fitting the new harness to the start panel took some contortion on my part…

I installed a new raw water filter in the engine bay for easier access, now there is heaps

more room in there! Also a larger raw water intake thru hull, the original was puny!

The installed engine looks great! I purposely decided to go with a non-flashy installation

Back in the water, we found to our consternation that the gear lever was working in reverse.

No, not the way it should – when forward was selected we went backward and vice versa.

Our “Engineer” remarked he thought that might happen as the transmission is on the

opposite side! He had no useful suggestion how to fix this (he seemed to expect me to live

with it!) After some thought I designed this to correct the problem:

It vibrates a bit, so I reinforced it with some dense foam to absorb the vibrations at the aft

end. Works fine.

The engineer came back twice more to ‘realign’ the engine, each time claiming it was fixed.

In fact it was not fixed which they eventually admitted and another (better) engineer was

sent. He was going to remove the engine again and enlarge further the slots in the engine

mount but I did not want this so I let him cut off the front through bolts and replace them with

coach screws further over. At least there is one through bolt to each of the four engine

mounts, a far superior situation to the original eight coach screws if we ever flip upside

down. Disappointing, but OK in the end. And now we are free of the excessive vibration!

So all in all, we are very happy with our choice of engine set up.

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