Hello All,
My 35 year old Westerbeke W-33 was finally sucking a quart of oil every 3 hrs this past summer on trip to eastern Long Island. 3 quarts on our run from Montauk to Fire Island Inlet. We stayed in our home state of NY due to Covid.
I hauled out after Labor day Weekend, ordered Beta 38 with 7 deg downangle transmission to install. My local boatyard hauled me and allowed me to do the work myself, and assisted pulling the engine and dropping in the new. I had already already spent plenty of quality time in the engine room over the years, so I disconnected everything, and yanked the old engine out. I spent 5 weeks total on the new install. The tricky part was adapting the Beta 38 to the W-33 molded engine bed. I had custom rear mounts fabricated by a local welding shop as the originals were a bit too wide to mount on the rails.
Beta, while claiming experience with Tartan 37 repowers on thier website, they had no experience with this conversion, and never contacted me for any of my install for their records. I purchased the engine from Joe Demers at Sound Marine Diesel, he was a saint answering my questions during the install. I hired a local Diesel mechanic to decide the final placement of the engine, and had to cut my prop shaft shorter 3 3/4".
All new systems were added and many locations modified. Exhaust Muffler had to be relocated more aft, Racor 500 Fuel Filter now in Lazarette with Glycol Tank, wiring cleaned up, bilge epoxied white, PSS Mechanical Seal, New Max Prop Easy 16x 12, engine mounting shims from G-3 material sourced from McMaster Carr, steel 1/4' backing plates, new waterproof instrument panel with push button start, new fuel gauge, new thruhull 1" then reduced to 3/4' at strainer for raw water feed., Groco hull mounted thru hull strainer on hinge to enable cleaning, I reused my Perco 3/4' raw water basket strainer, new size 1 AWG cabling to starter and engine ground.
Relaunched in early October, boat running great, with plenty of power. She even handles better around the dock. Reached 3300 RPM with current prop pitch, considering going down one pitch to 16 x 11 to get full 3600 RPM.
I was on this project daily, constantly ordering parts to stay ahead of my work, engineering details to figure out every step of the way. I enjoyed the challenge and the end result was worth it, I'm good for many years of cruising !
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