Re: Weight and lifting
One method to move a motor with just two able bodied people is this:<br /><br />1) Prepare motor by removing all connections except transom bolts.<br /><br />2) Lower the trailer jack so the rear is high. Put a few blocks of wood underneath the skeg of the motor.<br /><br />3) Crank up the trailer jack lowering the motor onto the blocks. Remove transom bolts while another person keeps the motor balanced on its skeg.<br /><br />4) Once bolts are removed, crank trailer jack up farther until the transom clears and lip on the outboard and pull boat forward leaving motor standing on blocks held upright by other person.<br /><br />5) Bring in new boat and jack up until transom clears under motor mount bracket then start lowering the trailer jack until motor is resting on transom.<br /><br />6) Install bolts, etc.<br /><br />I used this method to remove a 60hp V4 that weighed over 300lbs. Me and my neighbor, both in our 40's did this with no problems at all. Holding the motor upright balanced on it's skeg is amazingly easy. <br /><br />I also installed the 40hp weighing about 185lbs on the same boat by myself by suspending it from the rafters of my garage on a 1 ton hoist. I wanted to have a permanent place to mount my hoist in the garage so I built a support that spanned 4 ceiling joists (the joists are 2x6). I cut a 2x6 to about 5 foot and screwed and glued a 2x4 to each side making a shallow U shaped beam. The beam was screwed into the joists, U shape upside down, spanning 4 of the joist. A chain was wrapped around the center of the beam, and the hoist attached to the chain. <br /><br />Using that setup, I jacked the 40hp motor off the floor and up into the air by its lifting ring. It hung there for about an hour or so while I got the boat in exactly the right location. With most of the weight on the hoist, the motor can be slid around on the transom a few inches easily to get it centered and install the mounting bolts. <br /><br />I figure the motor at just under 200 lbs put about 50 lbs on each ceiling joist, a fairly mild load for those joists.<br /><br />Now I have a location to lift the motor whenever I need to without any muss or fuss.
