BKeith

It's not a solder joint, it a mechanical joint of some type, crimped, rivited or contact point in the switch. If it's under warrenty, I would not screw around with it, or you could void your warrenty. I'm not sure what you are calling a "hookup adapter". If it's a connection where two or more wires connect, it's probably a crimped connector or a crimp with a spot weld, either way, if that's what it is, the mechanical contact point is bad. In high current applications where they are using minimum size wire and max current, they may not solder the connections because if heat develops, like what you seem to be getting now, the solder will melt away and make the connection even worse. However like I always say, I'm not going to try and tell another person what they can and can't do with their stuff, because no one is going to tell me what I can and can't do with mine. If you think you can fix it and don't mind loosing the warrenty, go for. If you are comfortable with a possilbe fire hazard while running it, wait until you feel the time is right or it quits all together.

Those wires that are over heating are doing so because they have a bad connection, tape is not doing anything for you. You must repair the connection. If they are wires going into the speed switch, the switch is probably bad, infact it's probably melting inside and that's the reason you are loosing those speeds. By the way, the bad connect is going to be at the end the wires are over heating. The more you run it, the more damage you are doing, and it can actually catch on fire so, if you want to keep on running it, I hope you keep a fire extinguisher handy.

If you have a 25hp restriction on enough lakes that still makes it worth grossly under powering a 16 foot hull, then I would go with the 25. If you go with a smaller prop, it will do fine, it just won't be a speed demon, but it will get you around just fine. I might suggest be careful how much you get tied up in it, because of the fact it will be so underpowered, it will make a huge depreciation the day you sign the paper work, because it will be very hard to get rid of when you decide to upgrade. After all, I have a 25 Merc I use on my Lowe 1436 that only weighs about 150 pounds.

I've had several Stratos, Still have an old 285 Pro and a 169V that stays at the lake. Generally Good boats, but again, they have to be checked out. It only takes a few years for one improperly sealed bolt or screw to let the wood in the transom get saturate and rot. I'm not sure when they changed from the open cell flotation foam to the closed cell but prior to that year, the boats with open cell foam did not like being left uncovered and outside. This let water soak into the open cell foam and could add a few hundred pounds of weight, plus rot the stringers in the hull. I know the late 80's - early 90's still had the open cell foam. When it gets saturated, it makes the boat very slow and sluggish, and made it almost impossible to lift the bow on full plane. Also not sure when they went to composites. It will have a small sticker on the rear sides saying all composite. Don't confuse that with the one that says Hand Laid Hull. Regardless, it still has to be completely check out.

Once you do, there is a very simple test to see if it's large enough or not. Take a DVM to the lake with you after you get everything installed, and take a friend to operate the TM. Launch the boat, connect the DVM across the battery terminals the TM cables are connected to. Run the TM on high for a couple of minutes to give it time to pull the surface charge off the battery and the voltage stabalizes and make note of that voltage. Now disconnect from there and connect the DVM across the connector the TM is plugged into and run the TM on high again a couple minutes, give it time to stablize and make note of that reading. See what the difference in the two readings are, and figure you percentage of drop. 2.6 volts is going to be approx 10%. that's 10% of lost performance.

Other than unique parts like windshields, dash panels an that kind of stuff, there is nothing to worry about as far as parts. Those unique type parts are not going to be available on most older models of manufacture's still in business today. As for the Astro boat, it's not that popular of a model so you should be able to get a good deal on it, but as with any used boat, there are some critical areas you need to ensure are solid and sound, or you will have bought a useless piece of junk. The transom is critical and very subject to being rotten if all the holes made in it were properly sealed. Not knowing anything about boats, checking one out may be a challenge for you. Getting one checked by a dealer is costly and most will not do it without it getting in line, meaning it could be day's/weeks before they look at it. The two checks I make are simple. Most engine mounting bolts have 3/4" heads so take tools. My first test is to hold the head of the bolt with one wrench and then on then try to tighten the nut with another or ratchet and socket. If the nut starts pulling down into the transom without using an extreme amount of force, and does so for a couple of turns, don't walk away from, RUN like h**l, it's junk. My second test is to trim the motor all the way up, the stand on the mid section/lower unit and bounce up and down, the transom should not have any flex/movement in it. The boat might be bouncing on the trailer, but the motor had better not be moving on the transom. If it does, again. RUN. Next, check the floor. Get over inside the boat and while walking around, kinda bounce up and down. It should be firm and solid, If not, you don't really want it. After these two check out ok, check the steering cables. Trim the motor all the way down and turn the steering wheel full travel both ways. It should turn fairly easy. If it takes much effort at all, the steering cables are bad or going bad. That's not a deal killer but understand, if a repair shop has to replace them, it probably going to cost you over $600 to replace them. Checking the motor is going to have to be by someone that knows boat motors. There are several things you should check but with limited knowledge, it's not something you are going to be able to do and not knowing them, even doing a test drive, you might not recognize a serious problem it has. Replacing carpet is not a major deal but having to recover seats will be fairly expensive, so if they are in bad shape, check some prices before making the final deal.

I think if you did a search, you will find volumes of info on just that subject. A whole bunch saying worth every penny, and about as many saying no way.

When I installed the 80# motor on my 20' boat, I upgraded from #6 marine cable to #2 marine/battery cable and put the #6 in my 14' jon boat. As a minimum, I would go with #6 marine/battery cable, and if you can afford it, I would even go with a #4 (it ain't cheap). The marine/battery cable is a fine strand cable. I would not try to use the stranded house wire you get a Home Depot/Lowes. Here's one source that has pretty good prices http://www.pacergroup.net/Categories3.aspx?Id=6_AWG_UL_Battery_Cable&gclid=CNybkrTlsLkCFSgS7AodOUMACg, might check Cabela's and BPS, ebay, etc also. You will probably have to go to a welding supply house to get the heavy terminal lugs, unless you happen to be lucky enough to have a parts store that carries them. Some NAPA's have them but don't let your jaw hit the floor when they give you a prices. NAPA is the 7/11 of the parts stores.

Not too sure why they told you #10 wire was large enough to run your TM, I totally don't agree with that. #10 will handle the 35 - 40 amps of the TM for a very short length but not the distance required for the TM without causing a noticeable loss in performance. Even on a 17 foot boat, you are looking at 35 - 40 feet total length of cable, you have to figure the length it take to go from the battery to the TM and back to the battery, so if it takes 20 feet to get from the battery to the TM, you have to double that because of the return path. Here's one of many guides http://www.bluesea.com/articles/1437, check it out and see if you really want to use #10 wire. I would also figure it for no more than a 3% drop. 10% would be approx. a 2.5 volt drop and that will slow the motor down. Now, if you never plan to run the TM at full thrust, and never working at over approx. 1/2 thrust, the #10 will work.

Well, for the "most" days you come in and still have 60% - 70% charge left, the smaller battery would work just fine. My question would be, what about those other days when you use more than your normal 30% - 40%. As for running an AGM down further than a flooded cell battery, no, you should not. You should never run any battery down below 20% charge, Doing so shortens the life. In the ideal world, you don't want to run one down below 50%. With that said though, a proper maintained AGM is stll going to give you several hundred cycles, even run all the way down to 20%. Meaning it will probably die from non use before you get all the goody out of it's life cycles because you are still talking several years. I agree with you on dropping the weight. When I'm in south Texas visiting my son, we go a lot of times just for a couple of hours in the morning and evening with the jon boat, thrown in the back of his truck. I bought a small AGM just for those times because when you slinging a 60 - 70 pound flooded cell around, it gets old real quick.

Your HDSI wouldn't drain the battery down in days. Sounds like it's time to replace the TM batteries. On top of that, the TM should not be connected through the fuse panel, and the livewell and sonar should not be running of the TM battery. Everything on the fuse panel should be running off the cranking battery. ONLY the TM should be running off the TM batteries. Might sound like a dumb question, but if they are not sealed batteries, have you checked the water in them and made sure all the connections were clean. Another thing is having not used them very much tells me, if they are kept on an onboard charger/maintainer 24/7 while not being used, you probably ruined them by not keeping them charged.

Your saving grace was probably the fact you were at idle speed. A motor needs very little oil at idle and can actually idle for a while on raw gas, but I wouldn't recommend trying it to see just how long it will. Anything you did that might have hurt the motor would probably have showed it's ugly head by now so I seriously doubt you did any harm to it. After all, those Opti-Pops don't really need a good reason to blow, so if you gave it one and it hasn't by now, I doubt you hurt it. Also, I'm not much of a Merc guy so can't say exactly how yours works but sometimes they do the oil like some fuel injection systems, where they send way more oil to maintain a certain pressure and the excess is bled off back into the tank. If your oil tank has two lines going to the motor, that's probably the way yours is and it could have just been the return like leaking. Meaning the motor was getting plenty of oil and the return line was the one leaking. Dumping the oil on the motor rather than back in the tank. Regardless, I wouldn't be worried about it being damaged, but would make a good inspection of the whole system.

Drill and drill bits and new mounting kit for TM. If they are two different make TM's you will probably have to drill new holes to mount it. Same with the mounts for you depth finder. If they have different bases, you will have to drilled new holes for it also. Everything will stay 12 volts other than the TM. All you need from the old boat will be the batteries and the interconnect cable going between the two batteries. Possibly the circuit breaker also, unless the one in the new boat is large enough.

I guess most of ya'll are too young to recognize the outer shell of an old in dash flasher sonar. Looks to me like somebody pulled the guts out of and old flasher and left the housing in there. After looking at you third picture, I see the front part of the flasher is still sitting in the dash, what you have is the cover was on the back side of the dash that the internals to the flasher went in. I guess that's why it don't work.

I would never buy a trolling motor of any kind that's not variable speed. Those fixed speed controls that give you four, five, or six speeds totally suck when trying to use one while casting. They are always either too fast or too slow. If looking at one of the larger motors 80+ pounds of thrust, be careful about the 36 volt models. While they are the most efficient, you run into some major installation problems when it comes to batteries. You have to have a large enough boat to install a third TM battery or you are forced to use the cranking battery as the third battery. Using the cranking battery as the third TM battery (while a number of people do it) can bite you in the butt, big time, and leave you stranded. Also, using the 36V system pretty much makes you buy three new batteries because in series, all batteries need to be the same age and type. If not, you will be constantly having dead battery problems because stronger battery will usually be damaged pretty quickly.

I don't know about merc's but with Rude's, the ECM tracks the hours and at what rpm ranges they were run. The ECM also used to controll the break-in. I would take the SN: to a dealer and have him pull the maintenance records and see if all scheduled maintenance was performed and if it had any failures and what kind they were. As for how he broke it in, if the Merc's ECM doesn't control it, they there is no way to know if it was done by the book. However, I think if you check, there's not a lot involved in breaking in a factory new motor.

If you think it's the gas, change the seperator/filter. Water in the gas is what causes a problem, just adding high octane is not going to do anything for you and adding an additive is not going to do anything for what has been trapped in the seperator/filter .

That new, it still should have a lot of warrenty on it, make sure it's transferable. Might also want to look at one of those extended warrenty plans you can buy. From that point, that's about all you can do to protect yourself. Now, before buying, I strongly recommend having it checked out by a dealer and get them to pull the hours out of the ECM and pull up the service history on it. Yes, this is going to cast a few bucks, but it could save you thousands if you find it's a lemon and has spent more time in the shop than on the water, or it has had the dog crap run out of it and already has hundreds of hours on it. Now having 300 - 500 hours on a year old motor is not a deal killer, as long as he drops the price enough to compensate for it, but it he's price a tourny boat like an individuals boat, then he's way over priceing it. The average individual probably won't run on more than 50, to 100 hours per year, for what it cost today to run one, many won't even do that. So, that's a large numbers of years wear already on that motor when you get it.

It sounds like, for some reason you have lost a cylinder. This could any of a whole host of things, from bad electronics to a bad engine. First thing I would do it pull all four spark plugs and see if they all look alike. If one is black and wet, it's foulded for some reason. Swap it out for a new one and see how it does. From there you would want to check the spark with a tester. It should jump a 7/16" gap with a nice blue spark. One thing to remember, most plug wires may work fine and show plenty of spark, but when you put the engine under a heavy load, they can start breaking down, so the only way to check one for sure is to replace it. If it was me, while I was checking the plugs, I would go ahead and do a compression test. All cylinders should be within about 5% of each other. I would also Flush the fuel system and change the filter. Unless you are very, very mechanical, this is about as far as you can go in your driveway. It plugs/wires didn't fix the problem and the compression is good, anything else is going to be beyound what you can do. Most anything else is going to require the computer diagnostics and special equipment. It could be a bad injector, SECM and a number of other things you have no way of knowing or testing. OH! one other thing, NO WAY IN H**L should you try and rev that motor to 6,000 rpm without it being under a load. Also, even reving one to 2,000 or 3,000 means nothing if it's not loaded. All it's doing is running off a little extra spark advance so you are not getting into the fuel system like it would if it was loaded.

Water pump impellers I replace every three to four years. By then they have a started to harden and memory set into them, increasing the chance of failure and reduced volume. Change LU lube every fall, before the temps start dropping into the freeze range. Doing that, if it has developed a leak and gets water in it you don't know about, it's not going to freeze and bust the housing, and the lube should be changed each year. As for replacing the seals, leave them alone, it's too expensive and the chance of them leaking is slim, unless line gets wrapped around the shaft and cuts one out.

Like I said, that's something I would not recommend. There are a number of wires that go through the shaft and they all have to be shortened. The factories have access to special, heavy duty connectors that you don't have and they have a special process for installing them that you don't. If you get a bad connection, it WILL overheat and melt because of the current they carry.

Depends on what you are putting it on. On your average boat, it's going to be sticking up a couple of feet when you are in shallower water and tends to get in the way when casting. You need to measure from the bow to the water on your boat and add a couple of feet to that. Now, if you are fishing a lot of points etc where you are fighting heavy winds and boat wakes, being able to get that extra depth could come in handy, but I find what little I'm doing that, it's not worth the interference the rest of the time. I put a 60" on mine because I got it on sale, and finally took the head off a cut 10" off. This is something the average boater should not consider because it will probably void the warrantee and it's not something that's easily done.

I will give you the facts and you decide, Something in the line of the mid 50's is usually all you will find in a 12v motor, so you are limited on just how large you can go Large 12v TMs can be harder to get rid of when you decide to trade up, most people want 24v when going with larger motors A 24v system is about 25% more efficient than a 12 volt system, meaning you will get about 25% more run time when running on the lower settings where both motors would be developing the same torque.

You need stainless steel staples, regular staples will rust out within a couple of years. You need a marine vinyl to get the UV protection. The seats will dry out, harden and start cracking if you use a vinyl that does not have UV protection. To pay an upholstery shop to recover them will be expensive, probably $300 or more per bucket seat (and at todays prices, it maybe way more).

A good lawnmower pull cord work the best of anything I've used. Most any lawnmower repair shop should have it in bulk. I usually buy about 25 feet to keep it in reserve. You can probably find it a Lowe's or Home Depot, but they are usually going to be the most expensive because it usually comes in a shrink pack. I prefer the fully braided that's actually kinda stiff, I don't like the stuff made like 550 cord.