Moody 336 - Engine mounts

The engine mounts on our Moody 336 look fine but there seemed to be a bit of a shudder at low Revs and the engine appeared to be a little more shaky that we would have liked, we decided to change the Aft Engine mounts as we didn't know when they were last done. We should have made the decision to change all of the mounts but we decided to do just the rear ones and if it made an impact do the front ones afterwards as the boat was in the water for a new season and the aft ones looked easier.

We tried to order the Mounts from Volspec was told that the early mounts might have come as one piece with the riser bolt attached to the rubber suspension, so we took off one just to check, it turned out to be a later one that the rubber could unscrew so all we needed was the Rubber suspension them self, these worked out at approximately £45 each.

We took off the Mounts one at a time, with the boat still in the water we did chock up one side at a time with a car jack angled against the bearer but do not think was necessary as doing them one at a time seemed to support the engine fine, we needed a 17mm socket for the bear bolts, then we loosened of the large adjuster nuts with a 27mm spanner, then when happy the mount was not supporting the engine undone the 3 17mm bolts of the tri plate onto the engine and the whole mount came away, then it was just a case of using a Allen key to take the plate off the rubber and a 27mm spanner to take the threaded part off and exchange over the old rubber for the new, then put everything back the same way as it come off.

We had the Engine earth wire attached to one of the bolts so make sure you turn off all power if disconnecting.

Once both sides have been replaced you will need to realign the propeller shaft, there are many different ways of doing this, we find most of them confusing so this is the way we do it, we loosen off the 4 bolts (Allen Key )that hold the shaft end to the gearbox end we then tighten one of the bolts so we can just get a feeler gauge in at some point between the plates, if it goes in at the top but not underneath the back of the engine is to low so need to be raised and so on until the feeler gauge has the same grab all the way round, remembering of course to turn it every time you may have to loosen of=r tighten the single bolt a few times until you get is right, this is the only way we can visualise the position of the engine.

May sure everything is tightened back up before you start the engine and check you have the shaft aligned when you put it into gear.

We are going to have to do the font ones next but it's such an improvement we may wait until the end of the season now.