Well, obviously some of us are smarter than other's here on the forum. Came time for me to remove the 150HP Merc off the boat. I built me a real nice engine stand, similar to the ones that are shown here on the forum. Made mine a little heavier and larger. Bought me a lifting eye off Evilbay, and went down to HF and got a low price (cheap) engine hoist. Everything is ready to go, man I can't believe how easy this is going to be. :facepalm:
Removed the cowl, screwed the lifting eye in, hooked up the chain, lifted just enough to get some weight off, pushed the motor mount bolts through the tansom, and lifted the motor up. Hmmmm, can't get the hoist high enough...chain is too long...need just an inch or so...heck, let some air out of trailer tires...yep that worked. :clap2:
OK, trailer down the drive after airing tires back up. (OK, we all know the smart thing would have been to lower the motor back on to the transom and shortened the chain....what fun is that?) Plenty of room in garage now. Move engine stand over to engine hoist and....What the heck? The engine stand won't slide close enough to the engine hoist to lower the motor. Stand is either too wide or the legs of the hoist are too narrow....Hmmmm. OK, no problem. I will lay a couple 2x6's across the legs of engine hoist and place the stand on them. OK...that worked. Lowered the engine onto the stand, and installed two bolts to hold it onto said stand. Looks great.......Ah....shucks...how do I get the engine stand which now has the engine mounted on it off the legs of the hoist? Oh, I know...lets take some more 2x6's and build ramps to roll it down off the hoist. :clap2: Yeah that will do it. Raised the engine and of course the engine stand, put the long 2x6's under the caster/rollers on the stand, lowered the engine and stand and.....ah....shucks....the weight of the engine and stand is now on the 2x6's but the 2x6's are sticking straight out instead of angling down to the floor. I guess a mouse could have used them for diving boards. OK, I need to lower the hoist a little, push the engine stand towards the ends of the "mouse diving boards"....when I run out of slack in the chain...push the engine stand a little further. Yep! after a little while, the 2x6's were now angled down and I could continue lowering the hoist and slowly rolling the engine stand to the ends. :cheer2: Yep, it is on the ground and over to the side out of the way....Just need to figure out what I am going to do to get it back on the boat later. :facepalm: I am sure if I hadn't of used the lifting eye, I would have ended up with 400+ lbs of outboard laying on the garage floor.
