Mrs Higgins
Newbie
So far, this forum has been great! Bought a newly refurbed Ford Lehman 120 off our fellow TrawlerForumite Mr Mayon a couple weeks ago and he even delivered it from Washington to Santa Cruz, CA for a great price.
Now we are faced with the repowering process. Our mechanic has tasked me with searching the world for other people's stories of getting the old engine out and the new engine in. Having pulled off every part we can to get it smaller, he is currently thinking to carefully lift it out through the door with a backhoe. He thinks the angle on a forklift isn't going to work. But it'll be a very tight squeeze through the door no matter what, and the mechanic wants to know if anyone else has already gone through this and what they came up against... maybe we'll have to cut a hole in the ceiling and lift it up through the fly deck? Is there something we haven't thought of?
We're not 100% sure what kind of trawler we have, and a search of this forum shows we're not the first to encounter this problem! Our HIN starts with BLN - making it a Bayliner or a Bilnor (whatever that is). But the previous owner who donated it to us said it was a "1979 38' Defever trawler" and the model according to the registration is a "Conquest"... which does not appear to be something Art Defever ever built. It's a Taiwanese build by "Sea Chief", and might be a knock-off? But enough like a Defever to perhaps have the same issues with getting the engine out up out of the salon floor, and through the port side door (to the right in the attached picture).
Now we are faced with the repowering process. Our mechanic has tasked me with searching the world for other people's stories of getting the old engine out and the new engine in. Having pulled off every part we can to get it smaller, he is currently thinking to carefully lift it out through the door with a backhoe. He thinks the angle on a forklift isn't going to work. But it'll be a very tight squeeze through the door no matter what, and the mechanic wants to know if anyone else has already gone through this and what they came up against... maybe we'll have to cut a hole in the ceiling and lift it up through the fly deck? Is there something we haven't thought of?
We're not 100% sure what kind of trawler we have, and a search of this forum shows we're not the first to encounter this problem! Our HIN starts with BLN - making it a Bayliner or a Bilnor (whatever that is). But the previous owner who donated it to us said it was a "1979 38' Defever trawler" and the model according to the registration is a "Conquest"... which does not appear to be something Art Defever ever built. It's a Taiwanese build by "Sea Chief", and might be a knock-off? But enough like a Defever to perhaps have the same issues with getting the engine out up out of the salon floor, and through the port side door (to the right in the attached picture).
