Ben

If I took everything out of my boat and photographed it spread out on the ground, you would swear it wouldn't all fit in the boat. I have rain gear for two, and two large golf umbrellas. Sweat shirts and wind breakers for two Butane lighters flashlights Cordless Q-Beam Water and drinks crackers, potted meat, vienna's, beanee winnee's tools, plugs, prop, DVM, super glue, electric tape, tie wraps. Paddle, two fire extenquiers (one in the front and one in the back) telescopeing plug retriever PFDs for three and a throw cushion two small blacks lights just in case we decide to fish on into the night Spare reels, a number of spools of line Throw in about a dozen 5700 and 5600 organizers, about 50 lbs of plasic baits and 10 rods and reels This ain't all but it would take another page to list the other stuff. OH Yea!! TP in a zip lock bag, paper towels, and shop rags. Those are three standard items in every form of transportion I own.

There is no cost advantage, they are not cheap. http://www.motorguide.com/index.pl/digital The advantage is how well they work, how much longer the batteries will run and being able to dial in the exact speed you want to go so you're working a bank with a spinner bait, you can set it and go, the only time you have to let up is if you hit a spot you want to make a number of cast to. Constantaly Stopping and starting a TM can spook every fish in 50 feet. Any of the fully variable speed motors are better than the 12/24. MinnKota and MotorGuide make them. When looking at TM's, if they have a set number of speeds they are not varialbe speed.

AGM batteries will not give the run time a similar lead acid battery. Yes the Optima is a few pounds lighter, but they also have less run time. The main benifit to the AGM, you don't have to worry about keeping them charged like you do the lead acid batteries and you don't have to worry about the acid making a mess in the boat. This is strickly my own personnal opinion but for my use, someone would have to give me Optima's for me to use them because I would never pay twice (or three times) the cost of a good deep cycle lead acid battery for battery's that will give me consideralble less run time. Now if I took numbers of trips where it may be two or three days before I could get my batteries fully charged again, the Optima would be a great battery to have because that would play havoc on a flooded cell lead acid battery.

To my notion that way overkill. That's all I run on my 20' Javeilin with a 225 on back and have no problems hauling butt in high with it. I think a 50, no more than 60 would be more than plenty. As for a 12/24, theu aree a cheap way to get bow mount TM. Spend the extra bucks you will save by getting a smaller TM than the 70 and get the 24 volt digital or fully variable speed with mosfet control. At middle speeds the run time on the batteries will be about twice that of a 12/24 motor.

Don't know crap about Yammy's but for you to get that on any motor, the exhaust gas has to be exiting the motor above the water line instead of through the prop. Make sure your lower unit is not loose and letting the exhuast come out between the LU and mid section. If that's good and you see nothing visual that will let the exhaust escape you might have blown a powerhead gasket between the power head and the mid section. If it has blow this gasket, don't run it anymore until you have it repaired.

I think a 40 would be more than enough. You will always hear bigger is better, but when you're having to run on just one battery, that ain't always true. The bigger the more amps it's going to pull so if you try to run on max, you probably won't get much more than a hour or so. If you keep it down on the lower setting where you're just easing around, it will last several hours. The digital motors are going to give the most run time by far when you're not running them on max. Get the biggest, baddest group 29, 30, or 31, nothing smaller than a group 27. You want at least 105 Ah or if it only has the reserve minutes, 190 or more. Just remeber to be careful handling it, these things have caused more than one back strain or worse. The suckers are very heavy.

It ain't to be had unless you're wanting to spend some mega bucks. These new technology power cells like they are using the electric vehicles are about the only thing that's going to do what you're talking about. Even if you could find a 12 volt one with the AH capacity your talking about, you would have more in a battery than boat and motor. There are lighter batteries but they don't have the AH capacity a good lead acid deep cycle.

Even if you have the 3 amp BatteryTender, it's not big enough to charge a deep cycle trolling motor battery. Too small of a charger will not charge fast enough to create the gas bubbles necessary to prevent stratification. The bubbles rising to the top keeps the electrolite mixed from bottom to top. The recommneded charge rate is 10% of your batteries amp hour rating. As a minimum the charger needs to be large enough to charge the battery to a full charge at least in 8 hours. In most cases an 8 - 12 amp will work fine, anything less than six amps is kinda pushing it. It is a great maintainer to leave on a TM battery after it has been fully charged. I use them on my batteries that I don't have onboard charges hooked to.

You probably didn't sand it enough to take the dead gel off. If the gel is very thin to start with, you won't be able to get it back to new looking before it hits the metal flake, something you don't want to do. I would work a small area and wet sand it some more, then buff it out with a wool pad and 3M fine grit polishing compound with your buffer set at about 1,500 rpm. You may have to do this a couple of time but when you get the results you're looking for, use the 3M foam polishing pad with their Machine Glaze. It will look like a new boat. Doing a small area first will give you an idea of how much you will need to sand to get the rest of the boat to shine. I've done boats that were so dingey looking you would think they would never shine again but come out looking like new. I will say this, it's a lot of work

That extra five HP is not going to screw up the boat but you may run into several other issues. If the boat is under warrenty you may run into a problem if you have to have any warrenty work done on it. Insurance is another thing you need to check into if you're going to insure the boat. Some will allow up to a max of 5% over power some won't allow any. Some states (I know Ohio is one) will give you a citation for an over powered. Amost no tournament will allow an over powered to be intered. You will get fined by the coast guard if caught operating an over powered boat in under there jurisdiction. I know your only talking 5 hp, but that still exceeds what the coast guard rating on the boat is. With all that said, almost every boat I've ever owned has been overpowered by a bunch but I don't fish T's, coastal waters, my state don't care and I don't buy new boats and pay cash for them so I don't insure them.

You will get a longer run time if you run your two batteries in parallel instead of running one, then the other. That is only if they are the same batteries, the same age with approx the same use. Never connect two mismatched batteries together, not even the same make and kind if they are are different ages or have different use time. A couple of companies make a good battery for your use. US Battery makes one and Trojan in the Group 30 or 31 batteries. These are two of about the baddest batteries going if you get them in the 120 Ah (220 min reserve) but they can be hard to locate in certain areas. The Maxx29 at Walley world is an OK battery for the price but you will not get the run time out of it you will the first two.

The big yellow Everstart Maxx29 is a dual purpose battery and should work just fine for your cranking battery. I would not use just a straight automotive cranking battery because they don't like to be run down and fishing with your pumps and electronics on for extended periods play havoc on a straight cranking battery. By the way, big yellow on has an 18 month free replacement and 19 - 24 month prorated warrenty, but taken care of and they last three years easily. I swap my batteries out ever three years in my boats and have never had but one go bad before then. I run the Everstart in everything but my Javelin because they are fairly cheap and work fine in the other boats (that's 8 of those Everstarts every three years).

If you've checked and verified all that's good, check your foot switch. Take a volt meter and start checking voltages. Make sure you're getting full voltage all the way to the motor. Make sure you try to run the motor with the volt meter connected each time you check voltages, the voltage may be fine without a load but will go away as soon as you try to run the motor because of a faulty connection. Start by check the voltage at the TM side of the motor connector, if bad, check the boat side of the TM connector, then go back and check it at the batteries on the lead post, then where the cables connect onto the circuit breakers. When you have good voltage at one point and loose it at another, what's inbetween is bad. THere's a number of things that can be your problem. The foot switch, improperly wired or bad/corroded connections and the circuit breakers are the most common.

The batteries were ruined by not keeping them charged when not in use. Can't blame the battery on that one.

I think your trying to do this the hard way. I unhook the tie downs, leave the winch hooked, back the boat in until the stern starts to float, step on the bumper and onto the trailer tongue to the bow of the boat, unhook the winch, and climb over the bow into the boat. Back the boat off the trailer and dock/beach it, go park the truck and go fishing.

I think you will notice a huge difference with two people and a load in the boat. It may not be bunches faster with just you but loaded, I think you will love the difference. I have a friend that has a Fisher just like my old river boat, same year and model, with a 25 on it, mine has a 48 and there is just no comparison between the boat with both of us in them.

You said Batteries, is this a 24 volt motor, or is it a 12/24 with three wires connecting it? How many cables connect to the batteries and are there circuit breakers on the batteriers? It there are cables connected to both batteries, it's possible they may be connected wrong and tripped a circuit breaker. If they are the manual reset type you have to push a little tab on them to reset them. When you turn the prop by hand, does it turn fairly easily, other than the little resistance you get as it pass the poles in the magnets? It's also possible the brushes in the motor are not making good contact after sitting for a long time or dirty/bad connections from corrosion in the switch.

Wired parallel would only give him 12 volts and would not run his 24 volt motor. He has to have a series circuit to get his 24V. Any time you can increase the voltage, you reduce the current. That's why it's better to run 36 volt motors than 24 volt when running those bigger TMs. For expample, if they made an 82 lb, 12volt motor and it drew 60 amps on max, it would only draw 30 amps in a 24 volt version and 20 amps in a 36 volt. What also comes into play with increased voltage is it takes a smaller wire to deliver the same amount of power with the reduced current, the more current the larger the wire must be, so the motor part of a 36 volt motor can be a lot smaller than the motor on a 12 volt of the same power rating becuase they can use much smaller wire for the internal windings, therefore a smaller armeture. Less current also reduces internal resistance losses in a ciruit. That's why power companies deliver the power from the generating plan in 100 of thosands of volts down the main distrabution lines and then drop it with transformers when they get it where it's going. It would take cable the size of box cars to carry the current needed if they tried to use much lower voltage and would have temendous problems with heat and loss at every connection. Ya know, reading this, I need to start typing everything on a word processor program so it can check spelling and grammar. Mine sucks when I'm just typing and don't take the time to read what I wrote.

Not sure what 6ga marine cables is, if it's another name for 6ga fine strand battery cable, it should be fine. Cable ends should be the heavy copper, NAPA and welding supply stores have them. If you don't have a crimper, either the one you hit with a hammer or the $600 ones that look similar to bolt cutters, be sure to solder the ends with resin core solder. A Benzomatic tourch will be needed to do this. I solder them after crimping just to be sure of a good connection. You can take a very dull (rounded edge) chisle turned and centered long ways with the cable end and smack it a coule of time with the hammer, not hard enough to cut throught the copper but enough to fold it down hard and the wiring, then solder. I would make my first check across the TM negative and positve. If voltage across them is 25+ and does not drop much when loaded, there's nothing wrong with batteries or wiring. Are you using new batteries? Fully charged they should give you 25.6 - 26 VDC and should not drop more than a couple of tenths when under load of motor. If dropping a volt or more, batteries are no good. Check this on the lead post of the batteries and not the cables, the check it one the cables. If you are getting a voltage drop, measure from the lead post where the foot switch cable is connect to the oposite cable coming out of the for switch going to TM. You should not read any voltage when the switch is closed, if you do, the voltage you read is caused by resistance in the foot switch.

Depends on the motor. Most Johnson's/Evirudes need to see 16 or better. Can't say much for what the black motors require, your dealer should be able to supply you with a number. Sometimes the owners manuals have that. You should be able to tell by the feel of the boat. As you trim out, the bow should lift a little more each touch of the button and the boat should gain a little more speed. If the boat gains rpm and not speed, you have trimed too far and the prop is starting to cavitate, bump it back down slightly. If you listen, you can hear a difference in the sound and sometimes you can feel it in the steering wheel. Just how much you can trim out will be determined a lot by the prop you're running and how much bite and lift it has.

There's nothing wrong with your wiring. As mentioned, I would use a voltmeter and start measuring voltage drop. Measure across the negative and positive post on the batteries where you have your motor and bigfoot cables connected with motor on high and loaded (in the water). Should read a little over 25 volts. Now measure it at the motor's negative and positive cables, should be the same, if not you are getting a lot of resistance from somewhere. With the current those motors pull, should take long for a lot of heat to start building with motor on high, but you can follow back with the meter until you find the drop, if there is any. If it's at the batteries, get some more.

Let me just say, it ain't gonna be fun. Might ask at this site http://p082.ezboard.com/bstratosowners

I don't have a 270 but have a 1987, 169V and an 89, 285 Pro. Right now I'm building a 130 hp V-4 looper (basically the same as your 120) that will have approx 170hp to go on the 169V. I run a 6" jackplate on the 169 and a 8" on the 285 and the 8" is almost too much jackplate for that boat. I would think a 10" jackplate on a 270 would be way too much with the weight of that motor. That is not a light motor at approx 430 pounds. Does it have a bad tendency to want to porpose at at lower speeds and coming off plane? I only run a 10" on my 20' Javelin. As for playing with the setup, don't let the water pressure drop below 16 pounds, even in hard turns, watch your rpms and speed, if the motor gains rpm and not speed, you've raised the motor too high, go down 1/2". The same with lift, if you notice a loss of bow lift, drop it back down 1/2". I prefer the three blade Raker props but only after I send them off and have them custom tuned for the boats. The four blade Renegades can be made to run almost as fast as the Raker's but I still prefer the Rakers.

Your auto paint store should have self ectching primer, not sure you will want to pay the price though. Be ready for some sticker shock when they price it to you. Not sure what your wanting to do but in most cases epoxy primer works better. I prefer to shot a good coat of epoxy and then go right back over it with a coat of high build urathane before it dries.

You're getting into a lot more than you realize. It's one thing to weld a hole or leak in an open area but you're asking for major problems when you start trying to weld rivited seams. The rivets are so close together, the heated metal is going to distort and there will be more than a good chance a couple of more rivets on each side will leak. You will find yourself trying to weld every seam and every rivet hole and every brace inside that thing. Then, with all that welding, if he's even good enough to weld that thin aluminum, it's going to distort all kinds of ways. Basically, what you will most likely end up with is a big piece of aluminum you can take to the recycler.