new motor-mount

[Tommy Monaco]

I just wanted to share with you my excitement about a new piece for my C-26. The old motor mount on the stern was cracked and repaired several times by the p/o. The fiberglass mount wasn't built with the weight of new 4 strokes in mind after all. I was concerned about it all last season, to the point of tying a safety line from the motor to the boat, just in case anything were to happen. Well, instead of putting another band aid on the problem I had a buddy fab. a new mount out of 1/4'' aluminum, which I'll have powdercoated soon to match the hull. Here are some pics before we do the final fitting:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/57235663@N05/5468706167/ (an inside view)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/57235663@N05/5468706373/ (upside down, sorry)
Instead of the old bolts and washers we're going to do a solid strip of the same aluminum down the interior and bolt through that. I'm pretty happy how it came out and it's going a long way to easing my mind about the motor taking a dive to the deep.

On another repair note, I mentioned in a previous post that the rudder cheek had broken it's welds. We're going to clean up the old (shoddy) welds and re-do them and reinforce it all around. Hopefully this will all work out better than trying to get the internal diameter of the cheeks just right for the rudder to function properly, if we fab'd a new one.

We're going to be making up some new mushroom bearings out of nylon at the same time if anyone would be interested in getting some new ones or a set of spares.

When I reinsert the rudder post, are the bearings afixed to the shaft in any way? Or, are they on there relatively loose? Like, just slide the lower bearing on and let it go all the way to the cheek and reinsert the rudder shaft on up? Then just do the disassembly in reverse order? Any thoughts would be great.

[Windward]

That motor mount ought to do it! I went to a lot of trouble to rebuild mine. It looked great and was super solid, but I had to do a quick and dirty mod to accommodate my new 4 stroke a couple of days before going to the coast. Three and a half years later, the ugly mod is still going strong.

The bearings just slide over the rudder shaft. You may need to resurface the lower cup on the hull some... on Windward it was quite worn, but some thickened epoxy took care of that.

[Alanhod]

Looking real good Tommy, clearly an improvement not just a repair.

Thanks for show this. Hey also get the before, during and after shots of the rudder repair. I would like to see that.

Thanks
Alan