I bought a Harbor Freight engine stand, for the princely sum of $39.99 with a coupon or two ;-) Just the thing to hold the engine during its rebuild! The only problem is what to hold the engine by. In the end, I used the engine-gearbox mounting bolts, like so:
It would be ideal to have the center of the mounting post along the center of rotation of the engine, but the philosopher Jagger tells us that 'you can't always get what you want'. So, slightly offset it is:
M8 studding is inserted into the engine/gearbox holes, and is supported by multiple nuts and a bearing shell that bulks the M8 stud up to the inner diameter of the mounting stems. Only three mounting stems are rigidly connected, the fourth rests in a slot so as not to stress the engine castings too much.
It floats!
It seems to work just fine, but in case you're thinking of doing something similar, I suggest you remove the engine from the stand when you're not working on it, so that the castings are not under continual load. Also, I intend to support the engine when its in the stand so that not all the weight is being taken by the casting threads. That's fine while you're moving the engine around in the stand, but you want to minimize the load on the casings as much as possible.
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