Ben

Depends on how fast the current is moving. I have two 18 pound mushrooms in my 14 ft jon and the current in couple of the rivers I fish will still drag it until they find something on the bottom to hang on to. In swift water, it's better to find a tree or something to tie onto.

I always pack my bearings and fill the hubs with grease. Good seals will trap air and if you don't pack the bearings you may end up running the inner bearing dry. Just be sure you use the same tube grease you plan to use in your grease gun, and don't use a thick wheel bearing grease.

I would get me a couple of battery jumpers and connect both positive post together and both negative post together and not mess with a swith. You can buy short jumpers that have will go on the lead post of each battery so you don't tie up the studs. You will actually get a longer run time pulling off both batteries in parallel than running off one battery until it dies and then switching to other. As long as the A/B switch is connected in a parallel configuration, your friend is right, it's better to run in BOTH.

I would check with your home state to make sure you have the proper documentation to title it. They will do it as if it's a brand new boat being sold for the first time in that state, but you need to be sure of what they need from the seller as proof of purchase. Make sure you include the motor also. GA does not require a tiltle on it either but many states do.

It has to be etched first. Vineger will do that. Might check with you paint supplier, a lot of these new epoxy primers will stick to almost anything, one of them may work. They also make self etching primers, one of them may work on it. A good auto paint supply store would be your best source of info. Aluminum has to be primed with zinc chromate before painting it.

I always use cruise while towing, but almost never use overdrive. The only dfference between cruise and no cruise is if your not in cruise, you can feather the gas pedal and let your speed drop while going up hills so the transmission does not have to down shift or come out of lock-up as often. In cruise, it's going to try to maintain your set speed, no matter how many times it has to down shift. The trick to that is just don't use overdrive if it's in areas it has to make a lot of down shifts to maintain speed. Where I live, I'm almost always going up hill or down hill, so I very seldom use overdrive, plus I find my truck gets 2 mpg better gas milage towing my boat in drive at 65 - 70 mph than it does in over overdrive. Mine truck is a 98 4WD Chevy 350 V8 with a higly modified 4L60E transmission that will tow 6,000 in overdrive if I wanted to but like I said, I get better milage with 3,500 lbs of boat and trailer behind me in drive.

There are only a couple of key difference between the MK and MG. THe MK's shaft will flex if it hits something, the MG's will bend if it hits with a lot of force. I've always prefered MG's but have also bent a few shafts, got one I'm replacing on one of my boats right now. The main thing I never liked about the MK's (and not sure they still do it) but they didn't not start off at the power level they were set to. The rpm would ramp up to that setting, making them a pain in the butt to use in heavy lilly pads or weeds because they wouldn't clear themselves when you tried to start off. I've never had but one MK bow mount and got rid of it rather quickly because of that. I will say the MK's flex shafts might make me try anther one next time because of situations like this morning. Trolling motor got hung in on the bottom going in to get a lure unhung, It was hung in a stump and some large limbs where a large wake hit just as I was getting to the bank and pitched the bow a couple of feet further than I was wanting to go I couldn't raise it because wiith my weight on in the front of the boat, it was buried in the bottom too tight for the release to work. Finally had open the hinged door holding the TM to the mount, take the motor off the mount and lay it on the front deck and use the big motor to back out of the spot. Got so dang ticked off with the ordeal, starter to just crank the big motor, put it in reverse and let it rip the whole thing off the front of the boat.

Like said, get rid of it. Not sure what your going to pull it with but most newer vehicles require a special cable harness that plugs into you existing wiring in the back to adapt it so seperate brake and turn signals work with the single light system on the trailer. These are going to have a four wire flat connector. You can buy the round connectors with the four a four wire flat pigtail already wired so all you have to do is plug the two flats together and you vehicle is ready to go with a round connector. I've seen seven pin rounds prewired for the flats but I've never noticed a five pin. the only time you will need more than the standard four wire flat, is if you're running electric brakes. If you check, you may find the wiring diagram comes with the connector for the standard configuration. However, that doesn't mean that's the way they wired the trailer when they did it'

Dang, looked right over the fact he was wanting to do this with a tiller motor. My first thought on that is "WHY????????" Gotta figure you're talking less than 40 hp, since that's about the max a tiller motor comes in. Just hard to imagine getting much performance gain from a boat running a small tiller motor.

If you can find it, there is a cleaner called Knights Spray Nine. I've been using it since 1972 and it's the best dang cleaner I've ever come across for almost anything but it will clean the crap out of vinyl. Don't know why it never made it big and not sure they still make it. I ordered it out of Virginia the last time I bought some. It was getting so hard to find, I ordered 20 cases several years ago and still have a few left. I think my wife (and I) will go into withdrawels when it runs out and we can't get more. It will beat Simple Green, Purple Power, that junk called 409 and everyother cleaner I've tried 10 fold.

I think what you are refering to is a jack plate. They come in different off sets, from 4" to about 10" back, some piggy back two units and go even farther back. A couple of things to consider, one is the boat's warrenty, gotta make sure you're not voiding the warrenty, some manufactors don't allow them, some limit the amount of set back you can have. In general, almost any hull can benifit from one. They make it much easier to get the engine height dialed in and the extra set back makes it easire for the motor to lift the bow. There are some drawbacks also, if it's an older boat and the transome is questionable, you could rip the motor right off the boat. Just about any size you put on a fiberglass boat is going to increase the number of stress cracks back near the motor.

I think it would have to be in excellent condition to worth that. $200 - $250 would be a much more realistic price. Be sure you check the oil in the lower unit and see if it's milky. Those are very prone to leak after they get a little age on them. There's an O-ring under a brass bushing that's the main cause of the leak. Do a compression test on the motor also. I bought a 73 25hp remote start with controls last year for $50. The only thing wrong with it was the lower unit leaked.

When you speak of mod-V, I think of something like the STV's, Shadows etc. Not too sure these would make much of a rive boat. In rough water, a flat bottom is going to beat you up pretty good, but a mod-V is also. A deep V is the best for cutting rough water, but it's the worst for running shallow water, you can't beat a float bottom or a tunnel hull back-bay boat for shallow water.

Unless the self storage unit has special units for boats, I've never seen one of those deep enough to get a boat on a trailer in. Even if you get a 17' hull, it's going to take over a 20' when you take into account the motor on the back and the tongue on the trailer. If someone has never owned a boat and know very little about them and the motors, I have reservations about recommending buying a used boat. Too many people will sell you a pile of junk and for some reason, the unknowing buyer's ego won't let him pay the couple of hundred bucks to have it checked out by a professional, plus finding a professional that has the time to check on out the day you bring it in. Most are backed up a couple of weeks and the seller usually won't wait that long. There are some boats and a lot of name brand motors that you just don't want to get involved with. For instance, the 2003 and newer Evinrudes are very good motors but the late 90's and early 2000's for the most part are very expensive junk but they will sell them like they are the best thing made. At the same time not having experience with them and going in debt for a new boat, to find out it's not really the boat you were wanting can be a very expensive, hard lesson to learn. Once you buy it, unless you pay a huge amount down, it's going to be several years of payments before you get it paid down enough to get rid of it without paying a lot of money to the finance company yourself just to sell it. If you buy a smaller boat because it's cheaper and later decide it's too small, your stuck but not as bad as buying a 20' $30,000 and finding out it's too expensive to operate and those big payments start getting old real fast. Remember the golden rule "The bigger the boat, the bigger the hole it makes in the water to throw money in".

Bassaholic!!!!!!!! all I can say is I don't see anything in the name of this site that might even suggest most of the poeople on here would be anything else. Are you sure you want to join the rest of us here, where going crazy would be one extremely short trip.

I look at them the same as playing poker, if you can't afford to loose, you can't afford to play. Don't ge me wrong, not saying don't fish, I would be fishing if I had to use kite cord and safety pins but if you can't afford to loose a $20 bait, don't buy them. They might give you those one of two extra bites a cheaper bait might not but if I've never had problems catching bass on a Norman DLN, that I buy for $3.00 and don't bother me a bit if I loose one (unless it was the last one I have that size and color and the fish were tearing it up), why would I want to buy a $15 Lucky Craft. Is it just because it's more expensive lure and there for, it's gotta catch more fish. There are a few of those high dollar baits I use because they seem to produce more bites than others but a the same time, I'm not gonna get stressed if I loose it. If your scared of loose a bait, you probably won't catch as many fish on it as a cheaper bait because you will be to scared to through it in those tight spots, up in the middle of tree tops etc where the bass is going to be holding. Not too many bass gonna swin out of his limited strike zone to hit your high dollar bait just because it's pretty and you're too scared to put it in front of his mouth.

By replacing it. Hate to put it that way but that's about the only way. Something broke in the guage of it's sprung the coil that makes it move. Water can get in them and freeze and will make them do that also. Air in the line has nothing to do with it.

Check the compression before getting too involved. Old, small motor like that would probably have 130 pounds or more if good. Both cylinders shoud be within 5% and no more than 10% of each other. Another simple check is to make sure the carb is opening all the way up when you twist the handle. Butterfly shoud point straight out, sometimes they can travel too far, go past wide open and close some. If both those are good, check the points, clean and gap them to .020" Look at you coils and make sure they haven't start splitting and letting them break down at high voltage.

As mentioned, not but so many refineries, and they may make 10 different brands, might make the Johnson/Evinrude and might make Pyroil but don't think for a minute they are all the same. Keep your motor happy, buy a quality, name brand.

Where are you located, I have a 4hp merc, but would not got through the hassle of trying to ship it. Right of, don't remember what year model it is but think it's about a 95. Motor has very few hours on it but does not look brand new because of hauling it around in the back of my truck what few times I did use it. I used it on a narrow 12ft jon I used to go up into the mouth of one particular river (not much more than a creek where I went) but haven't been there is several years, even got rid of the little jon.

I should be reading higher than 12V. A fully charged battery will have 12.6 - 12.8 volts. With the motor running at approx 2,000 rpm it should be showing somewhere between 13.8 - 15 volts. I don't put a lot of faith in the dash quage and use a good digital multimeter across the battery terminals to check it. I also strongly recommend charging the cranking battery when you charge the TM batteries. Normally the motor is not run enough during the day (unless you're making long runs) to keep the cranking battery fully charged if you're running the livewells pumps and electronics. To check the charging system, connect a digital volt meter across the battery and note the reading, crank the motor and bring rpm up to about 2,000 and note the reading, if it did not increase, you have a problem with your charging system. Bad batteries are the number on cause of burned out charging systems.

most any charger will work, I would keep it between 6 and 15 amps.

Back in the mid 80's I was stationed in VA. The was a Naval Weapons Station outside Yorktown that had some monster bass, but was almost impossible to catch one. During the spring bedding I watched a guy snag one very large bass off the bed, the bass were so used to seeing boats they would not move away when a boat was over them. The Ranger Station (you had to rent their boats and that's where you rented them) was only a couple of blocks from this pond so I went and got them. We (me and a SP) got back just in time to see him snag another. SP used my boat, went over to him, escorted him back, had him load his stuff in his vehicle, and follow him. How would have liked to have been in that guys shoes, he was an active duty navy officer and was on a federal installation, where they had big signs at the Docs of each lake saying fish may only be caught on artificial lukes, NO live bait, No spear fishing and No snagging, plus a few other NO's.

Is this a 12V only motor? My 24V 68 lb MG TM has no problems running on 45 amp breakers and I run it on high a lot when chasing schooling fish.

It's illegal in Georgia, but as mentioned, not very ethical either. Maybe if you were stuck on Survivor and needed it for your next meal, it might be ok.