Under-Engine "drip pan"

[redbopeep]

I'm headed out to buy some copper 24" wide copper flashing to fabricate our roughly 2'x5' under-engine drip pan. Has anyone had success with man-made materials for this application? I know the copper will do the job but it comes dear these days.

Thanks!

[Kaa]

Why not aluminum or oil-resistant rubber?

Kaa

[John A. Tones]

Well what I did was to cut a piece of 1/4" ply such that it would slide down between the engine stringers with 1/2" clearance on the width and extend the full length of the engine and gearbox. Once I had this correct I made some 45 degree beveled pieces to rim this sheet and provide an easily cleaned interior shape. I added 1/4" ply sides to 3 sides and a lower one aft that just fits under the clutch and the covered the whole thing with 4 oz cloth and epoxy. When cured I gave it a quick touch up with the sander and several coats of white marine enamel and then attached it under the engine with a screw into the engine stringer in each corner, not really tight, and such that they were easy to get at if need be. The tray slopes forward so that any drippings tend to flow forward where they can be cleaned up instead of aft to collect under the gearbox and be totally inaccessible. I keep a couple of absorbent pads in this tray and every once in a while chuck them, give the tray a wipe down with some paper towel and start all over again. This has worked for over 10 years on "Penta" and was quite an inexpensive solution.

John Tones MV Penta
Sidney, BC

[mmd]

Unless your engine space runs incredibly hot (a whole other kettle of problem fish), there is no reason why a simple pan moulded out of (dare I say it?) fiberglass in polyester resin won't work. The usual complaint is that the manhours required to fabricate the part is more expensive than the copper or stainless or whatever, but if your time is free...

[JimConlin]

I'd make it of glass and epoxy. Carve a plug of styrofoam, tape and wax it seriously and lay up a glass pan over it.
You can get fancier with the shape and will save a buck.

[redbopeep]

Unless your engine space runs incredibly hot (a whole other kettle of problem fish), there is no reason why a simple pan moulded out of (dare I say it?) fiberglass in polyester resin won't work. The usual complaint is that the manhours required to fabricate the part is more expensive than the copper or stainless or whatever, but if your time is free...

I'd thought of both but....this idea and John's plywood (glassed, painted etc) idea both do end up being more labor intensive. We're "free" labor, but we count the value of our labor to be equal to what we pay a full-time guy working for us. As, he's on the project until its done, if it takes us an extra day to do something, then we're paying him an extra day, too. If my hours or hubby's hours are taken up doing this, then we're paying the hired guy to do something else that we could do.

I'd hoped to hear of a non-metallic material that could be quickly fabricated for this. All the plastics I could think of don't handle heat all that well, nor do they handle oil... There's not enough support there for simply something of rubber, I don't think. Just the floors every foot or so.

Well, the metal will be a quick install for sure...

[Kaa]

There's not enough support there for simply something of rubber, I don't think. Just the floors every foot or so.

Put a trash piece of ply underneath.

Kaa

[redbopeep]

Put a trash piece of ply underneath.

Kaa

I'm a girl, and I'll give you a "girly" response to that:

eeeuuuueee! not pretty! :(

[Kaa]

I'm a girl, and I'll give you a "girly" response to that:

eeeuuuueee! not pretty! :(

Okay, okay. Take a nice piece of okoume plywood, BS 1088 standard, of course. Apply CPES and then put on 18 coats of varnish. Don't forget to let each coat dry for at least a couple days, of course. Lightly sand between coats.

But really. An invisible piece of ply that sits underneath an oil drip pan that sits underneath an engine? If you call it structural reinforcement, will it become more palatable? :D

Kaa

[Dan McCosh]

Ours is pop-riveted aluminum. I made it about 20 years ago, and it has held up fine.

[jimmy]

I made mine out of fiberglass/polyester. I came up with some kind of clever way of making a mould in place with aluminum foil and then taking it out to put more layers on it and pretty it up a bit. The details are a little fuzzy, but one thing I do remember is that it is nice if you come up with a way to easily drain the drip pan otherwise it just fills up and your engine sits in water/oil and it eventually spills into the bilge anyway, oil first of course.

[ron ll]

I guess I was lucky. I found a Rubbermaid (I think) large flat box made for underbed storage and it fits under my engine. It isn't easy to get in or out and fits in there kind of crooked, but no one can see it. If it has liquid in it, I can just pump it out with a small hand pump. But on a Detroit Diesel, it is kind of a nice thing to have.

[The Bigfella]

I had three made of stainless back in 2001 for 2 x Detroit and 1 x Lister engines. The total bill was somewhere in the order of 1 BOAT unit (= Bring Over Another Thousand)

I now need some more for under the fuel tank drains and under the Racors. I'll do them myself.

[djn]

I use a cake pan. Got it at the thrift store for .50

[redbopeep]

I went to the local metal salvage store, bought a pretty :) and new 16 oz (1#/sf) copper 3'x6' flashing sheet to make into this. $90 (ouch!). Tomorrow, I'll bend up the sides, ask hubby to braze the seams and it will be done. ...well, actually I guess I'll have to go re-fill the acetylene tank first...but then it will be done. So, 1/10th a boat unit is sorta ok.

[Bob Cleek]

I have a copper one that came from the builder. Years ago, back in the days when every garage had a fancy metal tray or at least a pile of newspapers under the car to soak up leaking oil, it become mandatory to put an oil drip pan beneath boat engines to keep leaking oil out of the bilges. How often do you see drip pans or newspapers under cars in household garages these days? I really don't know why people still see the need to do it on boats. Given modern manufacturing quality (likely mainly due to improved gasketing materials), there is no reason why a marine engine should leak any oil at all. If it does, it needs a mechanic's immediate attention, not a drip pan!

[Concordia...41]

http://www.woodenboat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=69080

(Give me a minute to re-link the photos)

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b8df02b3127cceb4ba706c29e200000036108BYtG7lsxbq

Copper is cool :D ;), but hers was a fairly complicated tapered arrangement that I didn't see me tackling on my own. :eek:

FWIW, we ended up building a ply base (epoxied within an inch of its life and painted with red lead) for it to sit on.

[Concordia...41]

As usual, Bob's right. :rolleyes:

I think it's good to have something there, but if I have this much oil (or anything) coming out of my engine, I have worse problems than my pretty copper pan getting dirty.... :eek::eek:

[brad9798]

Get a large, aluminum roaster pan from your local grocery store ... For $2.00, problem is solved!

:D

[The Bigfella]

Get a large, aluminum roaster pan from your local grocery store ... For $2.00, problem is solved!



Like they make them 6' x 2'?

Oh yeah - I've got 2 x American engines (Detroit) and 1 x British (Lister). The damn drip trays should be piped direct to an oil recovery refinery.