Engine mounting

[Ken13559]

One of my engine mount (back hole of starboard rear) lag bolt hole is loose. I fill it with some strip pieces of wood and tighten. Not great repair work, lag bolt not tight but so far no issue. Wondering, is there a better and not too involve way to do this repair so that lag bolt could be tighten somewhat?

Ken Y

 

[Don S/V ILLusion]

considering that engine shock mounts aren’t used instead of something else, the ”better” way would be to replace the mount(s) but I think you know that. What you are really asking is what ‘half-assed’ fix might temporarily work. I use duct tape for those…

 

[DArcy]

It sounds like one of the bolts holding the mount into the stringer is pulling out. Have you checked for rot in the stringer? If it is solid, you could remove the bolt and fill the hole with thickened epoxy then reinstall the bolt. As long as you can get good torque on the bolt it would likely be as strong as the original. Just make sure you understand what caused it to be loose in the first place.

 

[Ken13559]

considering that engine shock mounts aren’t used instead of something else, the ”better” way would be to replace the mount(s) but I think you know that. What you are really asking is what ‘half-assed’ fix might temporarily work. I use duct tape for those…

Don, i did used half-ass fix which lasted many years but is now considering a full-ass(hope it means what i think it means ) fix since I've plan to replace all engine mounts.

 

[Ken13559]

It sounds like one of the bolts holding the mount into the stringer is pulling out. Have you checked for rot in the stringer? If it is solid, you could remove the bolt and fill the hole with thickened epoxy then reinstall the bolt. As long as you can get good torque on the bolt it would likely be as strong as the original. Just make sure you understand what caused it to be loose in the first place.

I've yet check to see if there's rot inside, but suspect there's some. Hoping to just fill it up with some miracle compound so i don't need to go digging out the rot/wood. Is there such compound? BTW what epoxy should I use after the rot is dug out?

 

[TimFromLI]

I had that problem on my Ericson. I filled the lag bolt hole with West systems Gflex 650 and some filler and then redrilled the hole. It worked fine. Some people will epoxy a wood dowel in the hole and re-drill it. You'll probably need to remove the engine mount and realign the propshaft when done

 

[LloydB]

ez-loc insert should also work if any rot removed first.

 

[RoyS]

Sometimes you can use a thicker lag bolt. Sometimes you can use a longer lag bolt. Sometimes you can rotate the motor mount base and drill a new hole. Gluing in a dowel and re-drilling as suggested above is a good repair, also.

 

[Ken13559]

Noted all above. Got to check hole condition when replacing engine mount.
Thanks all.

Ken Y