It was finally time to put the engine back in to this boat. Check out the post on rebuilding it and running it. Also, Chris Craft didn’t install oil filters on these engines. Can you believe it? Well we did, and here’s our discussion of it.
In this picture of the engine compartment before the engine is lowered in, notice the black engine mount wedge on the engine bed. Alignment was accomplished by sliding this steel wedge in to get the engine mount at the right position. Then a 1/2″ diameter lag bolt goes through the engine mount and wedge into the engine bed, which is itself lagged to the stringer. Note the blue tape on the stringer marking existing bolt locations that have to be avoided.
The finishing touch on the engine, after getting it aligned correctly and bolted to the prop shaft, was to add the engine plate.
I probably should have done this before installing the engine, but it was easy to do with the engine in place. The plate was originally held in place on the manifold with U-drive screws. These are a type of fastener that look kind of like a rivet in a blind hole. They’re made of really hard metal (harder than the cast iron of the manifold), and I had to cut them to remove the plate so I could refurbish it.
Drilling the old screws was ridiculously difficult. The easy solution was to shift the plate about 3/32 of an inch, drill new holes and refasten it.
