I just received delivery of my new Beta 14 to replace the old Volvo MD7a in my Sabre 28. The engine was ordered with the standard deep oil pan and shipped from someone who had done a Sabre 28 refit. When trying to seat the engine on the beds, the oil pan hits a stabilizer bar between the two beds and will not seat low enough for the engine mounts to meet the engine beds. Turns out the setup of this Sabre 28 is different from the other Sabre 28 refit the Beta dealer had done.
The suggestion for fixing this problem was to insert shims between the engine beds and mounts. The problem is that the drain plug for the oil pan sits right above the stabilizer bar, so shimming the brackets up will not fix the problem of not being able to drain the oil from the engine.
So, is the shallow oil pan option for the Beta 14 the same engine with a different pan? Or is the engine itself different? Is changing the oil pan from standard deep to shallow the solution to this problem? If not, what is?
The engines are the same. The difference being the sump pan itself and also the oil pickup tube used inside the sump pan. I.E. A shorter tube is used for the shallow sump.
If the oil sump pump is fit, the shallow pan decreases the total depth of the pan by ~2.7".
On the shallow pan version, the drain fitting for the sump pump is located at the rear of the pan versus the bottom of the pan on the standard sump version.
It sounds like you need the shallow sump. Compare the dimensions of the two sumps on the Beta 14 drawing found here.