I need to get the Zetec engine off of the floor, so I can continue to clean it up. I want to get the oil out of it, and I want to clean the rust off of it, so I can re-paint it. At some point, maybe not until I get it into the car, I want to replace the stock oil pan with a shallower system.

I don't have an engine hoist, so I decided to hack something together to at least get it onto the the work bench. I got a manual cable winch, which I bolted down to one of the shelves I built in the basement. I ran the cable over a J-hook which I screwed into a floor joist above.

First problem I found today, was that as I wound the cable up, it simply pulled the shelves.

So, I pounded a piece of conduit into the floor in front of the leg that was being pulled, and that fixed that.

The next problem is that the J-hook is being bent in the direction of the winch. The engine is being picked up, a little. The cable is being pinched at the J-hook though. I am afraid to get it up off the ground, and have the hook or the cable fail, and drop the engine.

I've started a seperate blog for the Lotus Project. Check it out!

Don't worry, I haven't dropped the ROV project, though. Nothing has been done on that for a while, but I do have quite a while before we could launch it.

In the mean time, I would like to work with the accelerometer to make sure I can determine the stance of the ROV. Especially in a rollover situation. With our design, there shouldn't be a rollover possibility, but... I want to be absolutely sure that if the ROV does rollover the thrusters reverse, and lift the ROV.