I have mentioned before that I prefer solid mounting of engines. Solid mounting requires accurate engine alignment without which serious breakages can occur.
Solid mounting of my engine is difficult due to space constraints, but not impossible. I will probably do it some time in the future but not at the moment because with it's current set up I am not able to get the required accuracy of engine alignment.
The problem is that due to the propeller shaft length the propeller is only about 10 mm behind the P bracket which means the closest I can draw the prop shaft flange to the gear box flange is 25 mm when the flexible coupling is removed. This makes it almost impossible to get an engine alignment within 3 to 6 thousandths of an inch.
There are two alignments that need to be done as in the illustration. The upper being radial and the lower being axial.
The process is one of narrowing it down until an acceptable alignment is reached. Quite often doing one alignment puts the other one out again. The best tool I could use was a 150 mm (6 inch) steel rule.
First off is to clean the flange edges and faces of paint and dirt. Then in the horizontal plane adjust using the slots in the engine mount brackets to get both alignments as close as possible in that plane. In the vertical plane use the adjustment nuts of the engine mounts counting the number of flats of the nuts so as to have a measure of how much adjustment is made on each mount.
Tighten the lock nuts and recheck the alignments.
The radial alignment I measured by placing the straight edge over the edges of the flanges both sides plus top and bottom. The axial alignment I achieved by measuring the distance between the flange edges side to side and top to bottom.
Eventually I got my alignments to within half a millimetre which I deemed acceptable. A confirmation of the alignment is how freely the prop shaft can be turned by hand when it is coupled up again.
If you have got it right your stern gland will probably drip more freely as mine did, so it needed to be adjusted up as well.
I hope this information is useful to you guys.
Cheers Cisco