If you ship an engine, any engine, it is an absolute requirement to insure there is no “slop” in the original styrofoam cradle. You can check this before packing up engine in item box and then shipper, by gently sliding engine back and forth and up and down. If it moves, you must secure with more padding inside the styrofoam cradle. Packing peanuts not acceptable, as they will crush, by design. Any initial slop will be increased by the constant shaking, movement, and tossing of packages in shipment cross country. Double boxing would be ideal.
A styrofoam cradle is not steel, and repeated insults will break it down, increasing free movement within, which only makes it worse.
I received an engine today, (which the driver tossed up onto my porch), where rear railing is snapped off the frame, front railing was bent back far enough to touch the nose of the cab, one of the nose side railings was pushed up and out of its hole under the cab window. Original polyethylene (?) spacers had been replaced by folded foam wrapping material, which is, of course, much more readily compressible.
This item was in the shipper’s system for over a week, with an astonishing number of entries (22) in the tracking system. As soon as I picked it up off the porch, I knew their was damage as it slid back and forth.
Sadly, this could’ve, and should’ve been, avoided.
