Way2slow

A scraper and lacquer thinner will take most adhesives off fairly easily. If it wraps around the lids and you don't mind the work to shave pile from the sides of the lid when you put the new carpet in, I would go with a 20 or 22 oz. It looks sooooo much nicer but you normally have trouble opening and closing the lids on older boats if you don't shave the pile off where it wraps on the sides. You will probably find it difficult to find the proper carpet locally. The last two I've done, I ordered mine from C&O Marine. It's been about six years since I did my last but I'm sure they can still get it for you. My last was 20oz and it came from Stratos. I think it was about $10 a yard. It comes usually comes six feet wide and has taken 25 - 30 lineal feet to cover the last two boats I've done, one 18.5 and one 20" I also recommend Weldwood Original Formula contach cement to install it. Trying to use carpet glue is a pain when you start trying to wrap and clamp it around lids and keeping the edges down until it dries. A narrow paint roller works nicely to apply it. Get a couple of spare rollers and a few 3 - 4" throw away bristle brushes. Make sure you lay everything out so all pieces are cut in the same grain/weave direction. If a piece gets turned it will look a different color at different angles. Use wax paper in areas where you have work in and get it positioned before you want it to stick. Just don't put pressure on the wax paper or it can stick also. Cover the glue area with it, position you piece and then slide the paper out while keeping you carpet in position. If you let two glued surfaces touch, you may not be real happy.

Don't think you can go to a larger pitch prop and run faster, normally you will find just the opposite happens. You drop the rpm and that increases the load on the engine, it does'nt get into it's peak horse power band and boat runs slower. You DO NOT want to run a prop that drops you more than one or two hundred rpm below the manufactors recommended max rpm. When trying different prop comes into play is trying different blade designs but staying with one that keeps your rpm's up. Prop blades are designed to provide extra bow lift, stern lift, bow and stern lift, extra cup to run higher in the water, even to the point they can be run with the blade cutting the surface of the water (chopper props). Some may provide no bow or stern lift and have very little cup. Then you have the unvented, vented, over the hub, through the hub and those that have over and through the hub exhaust. All these different types are so you can match one to you're hull. Different boats respond differently to various props. Most bass boats like a lot of bow lift and extra stern lift, unless you're in one of those hydro-rockets like the Bullets and Allison's, they don't like a lot bow lift where Rangers usually like as much as you can give them.

Doing a tandom axle trailer with 3,500 lb axles used under most bigger bass boats can get a lot more expensive than your standard little single axle trailers. I've towed all over the south east and many trips to South Texas and have no problems with checking, cleaning and reinstalling if good. Been doing that since 1965 and haven't had a bearing failure yet. Granted though, I do get the bearing kits with bearings, cups and seals that you can pick up at Northern Tools and Wal-Mart for my jon boat trailers. For the $10 or so they charge for those is cheaper than you can buy the seals at a lot of places.

You're motor is going to be sticking an extra 5 inches below the bottom of the boat. In deep water, other than running a little slower from the drag, no major problems at slower speeds, but the anticav plate can cause some strange handling problems at speed. It also greatly increases the chance of damaging the lower unit/prop in shallow water. I would suggest selling the motor and getting a short shaft. If it's an older OMC (Johnson/Evinrude), they have a 5" adapter. Take it out, get another drive shaft or have that one cut and welded and shorting the water pump tube and shift rod and you turn a long shaft into a short shaft. I've done several of those.

I think you've gotten enough saying "GET THE MAXIMIZER" If you're never had a motor with it or something similar, you will be wondering why not and never want another without it after you've used it.

If it's the same frequency, it can be spliced onto your cable, but you have to know how. It also make like much simplier if they are the same type cable. However, if you're having to buy one, why not just buy the one that fits.

Just use the SeaFoam, it will do everything all those others do. If you use your boat at least every month or so, run 1/2 oz per gallon. If the boat is going to sit a few months add an additional 1/2 oz per gallon, get it mixed in good and run it on the hose for several minutes to give that time get into the carbs/injectors. You're engine will luv you, but you're mechanic might forget your name.

There is a delay, but since electricity travels almost the speed of light, in 18' I think you would have a hard time trying to measure it. Just some gee-wizz info. I was at fairly large dealership where a friend of mine is parts manager and I mentioned to him I just installed my first Minn-Kota, the Terrova with the iPilot and built in transducer. Told him how I didn't like the foot pedal and he said he's not seen a bass fisherman that did. He also said they have had problems with almost every one they've sold. Another thing he told me to do was to epoxy around the transducer before I even put it in the water, they've had lots of problems with them leaking and letting water get into the motor. Makes me think maybe I should have stayed with Motor Guides.

Yes, that's considered on the low side but I see a lot of people that only bass fish in the spring when they are easy to catch. You also have to figure what it has cost in gas to go fishing for several years, a lot of guys have cut back on their running and gunning. I used to think nothing about running out 30 - 40 gallons a weekend twice a month. Now I seldom go, and only put in 20 gallons and usually still have buches to pump out when I get back. I don't leave gas in my tank for over six weeks so I pump it out and put it in a vehicle when I get back. I checked last weekend and I've put 14 hours on my motor in the past 2 1/2 years.

Once a year, usually at the end of your fishing season when you winterize your boat, you should remove, clean, inspect and pack your wheel bearings and replace the seals with new ones. If the bearings still have a nice, shiney surface with no pits or marks in them, they should be good to go for another season. If showing pits and signs of wear, replace them. Don't forget to check the races (cups) also. They will have some discoloration where the bearing (cone) runs but there should be no pits in the metal.

If you are reading across the post on the battery and not the cables connected to it, your battery is 100% junk. If you happen to be reading across the cables, check it again reading across the post, if it's still dropping like that, battery is junk. This is to make sure you don't have a cable that has a bad connection. A good battery should only be dropping a few tenths of a volt with motor on max. It would take a TM that was totally shorted and not turning at all to pull a good battery down that much, which would probably be generating a lot of smoke to go along with it.

Oh, about $200. Plus the Terrova is available in 80 and 101 thrust, the V2 is not. Biggest difference I've seen is the bow mount deploy system and the foot predal. I guess they had to go with a different bow mount to handle those stronger power heads. The Terrova has the more conventional style pedal that lets you rock from heel to toe to steer with a toe switch to turn motor on. Which I happen to find kinda sucks because it does not give the same response as your cable control system. I find it somewhat difficult to control using it. I find it easier to turn the auto pilot on and then bump the constant run button to go and the steer buttons on the back of the pedal when I want to change directions. I should also mention I mostly sit when I fish because my old back bone does not let me stand for long periods so that could add to the fact why I don't like the foot pedal system.

Personnaly, I don't advertise for anyone that does not pay me. I try my best not to buy cloths that have logo's on them. I don't put stickers on. I even make dealer's take their decals off my vehicles. I tell them if they want to take their advertising charge out of the cost of the vehicle and pay me a small sum, they can put it on, otherwise take it off. I have this thing about paying for anything that's going to make free advertisement for the company selling it. Granted, the way many things are today like Nike, Under Armor and many other brands, that impossible to do if you want a quality item, but I dang try my best to.

The cylinder looking ones are called Gas Springs and if you do a search on the net you can find a number of places that sell them for what ever price you want to pay. The size you're looking for you should be able to find for about $15. You will need to determine the pressure you need. Get some too strong and the lids are not going to stay down or hard to close, too little pressure and they won't stay up.

Thanks for the info. That ruled out the 5X, it would be useless to me. The more I thought about it, it seemed overkill to have a 7 sitting right beside a 10. I found a dealer with the 5 he could ship tomorrow, at a very good price so I'm back to the original plans of putting a 5 in and just got through ordering it. It will be here friday. I picked up another 6' ethernet cable and power cable so I can have it ready to drop in as soon as it gets here. The 10 will be pulling double duty, it will be used in a flats boat also, so the 5's power cable and another transducer will be installed in that boat. With another swing mount base, it will be just a matter of screw the nut on holding the arm and plugging up the cables. Gotta do something to justify paying that much for a flipping sonar.

Background info: Got my HDS-7 installed on the bow and HDS-10 on a RAM swivel mount on the gunnel beside the console and Structure Scan unit mounted in rod locker in front of drivers console. Still had not gotten shipping on the 5 so I've canceled that one. Did that for two reason's, one is not sure I really need three units with GPS, and if I do, it's only a couple of hundred more to put another 7 in the console. I've made me another dash plate and by moving guages around and leaving out the speedometer, the 7 will mount in there just fine. Would you install all three units with GPS capability? I have the 10 sitting right there beside me but the most I desire to do with that is split screen, only showing two features. Even on the 10, those windows get kinda small when you try any more than that. From what I've played with it so far, when moving a a new location, I'm thinking it would be nice to be able to view the chart plotter on one screen, the sonar on another and the side scan on another. If I put a 5X in the console, would I be able to have the bow mounted HDS-7 set on chart plotter and network it's display to the 5X in the console? Would I need the Navionics map in the 5X or would the one in the 7 give the info I needed for the 5X. I can get the 5X for a little over $400, another 7 is giong to be almost another $1,000. I still have not done much with the networking cabability, (there's a lot of crap to learn on these units) so I'm not sure what all my networking capabilities are. I just found the DVD instructions for the Structure Scan unit last night. All I had till then was the installation manual. Finding a lot of stuff I didn't know that I've been able to read the DVD. ONe other thing I meant to ask. The 10 had two card slots. Will it read both of those so you can have you're map in one and use the other for storage, or is it stickly so you can use either of the two type MCC cards?

Twice I've tried the go the cheap way out and mount a skimmer transducer on a trolling motor, both times it eventually go broken off. One just broke the mounting tab off and I reused it as a shoot thru the hull. The other got up into the TM blade and it cut the cable. It was useless after that. My standard practice now is to just go ahead and buy a puck transducer, I'm yet to break one of those off, may do it next trip but I've put them through some pretty ruff stuff and so far, so good.

I just installed over $4,000 worth of "Fish Finder" in my boat and it's only purpose is to help better find/indentify the places that has the potential to hold fish. I bought my first sonar in 1965 and have upgraded to the latest and greatest about every four to five years since, so I've used almost everything known to man for electronic "fish finding" equipment from 1965 until now, there have been very few fish put in my boat that were actually seen as fish on the sonar. Even with this high price, sophisticaed electronics I have in my boat now, I still say the only true "Fish Finder" is the right lure on the end of a good line presented properly in the right spot. All that fancy electronics is only to help better find/identify that right spot. All that seperates the pros from the wanna be's is the ability to find the right spot and know what the right lures is and how to place it there. We have the same access to use everything they have but their knowledge. Oh, and guess what, I just got through spending hours and hours idling around most of the day saturday learning all this new fangled equipment and not once did I notice the classic "arch" on the display.

Why not just buy a new prop and have the repaired one for a spare. Maybe even get a four blade and see how you like it. Sometimes on the heavier bowed boats, like some of the Rangers, they actually help hold be bow up and they run better. There's no way a prop is going to keep me off the water if I was wanting to go. I've probably got 1/2 dozen different cut's and styles I keep laying around. All for the same motor, just for different situations.

Before you get all geared up to do that, go by Lowes or HomeDepot and get you a 1/4 sheet of 3/4" plywood, then get on old cane pole or something that will float. Don't have anything in the boat but the plywood, pole and wood paddle and put the plywhere you think you would like a deck. Take your billfold, cell phone and anything else out of your pockets that you don't want to get wet. Ease out into the lake and try to stand and use the cane pole like you're flipping. I would recommend a life jacket also if you do this in water over your head because in that small of a boat, you're probably going to get wet.

As the prop is cutting through the water, the water is passing over the surface area of the blade with a lot of pressure against it. A smooth, polished surface makes the water want to adhere to the blade, creating drag. A properly textured surface on the blades create microscopic air bubbles that keeps the water from adhereing to the blade, so it passes through the water much easier. Same principle as sanding the last three feet of the pad with 320 grit paper, the boat will run faster. Wax it and it will run slower. I gained 5 mph in my old Startos 285 Pro just by blueprinting the hull. I went from 79.3 to 84.7 mph without touching anything else. However, everything else had already been tweeked. Now!!! Understand, I'm talking about high performance bass boats that run in the 70's or more. All this means diddly in your boats running around at 50 mph.

As mentioned, dirty/corroded terminals will cause it. A weak battery will also cause it in a heartbeat. Place a voltmeter across the lead terminals on your battery, crank the motor and see how much the voltage drops. It should still have more than 12VDC when cranking. If it's dropping much more than that, I would get me a new and bigger cranking battery. If it checks good checking across the lead post, connect to the terminals on the battery cables and check it again. If it drops more there than it did on the battery, you terminal connections are dirty. Remove them and clean them good.

I figured running a 300 racing Merc on a bass boat, one would be looking for the best bang for the buck in a performance prop. I've never seen an off the shelf prop that will perform with one that has been in the hands of a good tunner. I know bunches of racers running Bob Lipton's props, but seriously doubt you will find one running one from Phil's. Most any cookie cutter prop shop can throw one on the die for that blade and give you back one close to OEM specs. None of the cookie cutter shops and very few prop guys can massage one so it's optimized for your boat/motor combination. It's been so many years since I've run a "stock" prop, I would feel like I was going out with something wrong if I had to. One word of caution though, Bob Lipton does not polish a prop, he leaves them with a satin finish. A satin finish has less drag in the water. If looking for shine over performance, don't call him. Rich Boger polished his up all nice and shiney, but he charges for all that extra shine.

Question for those that have them installed and networked. I've got the HDS-7 on the bow and using the built-in Minn-Kota transducer. I have the HDS-10 at the console with the X-ducer on the rear with the structure scan X-ducer within eight inches of it. (still waiting on the HDS-5). I'm assuming the trying to use the HDS-7 with the structure scan is going to pretty much be useless, since the book says the X-ducers have to be less than one foot apart and these a 20ft apart. It looks like I can change the 7's image to show what the 10's is displaying, which would give me a good picture with the structure scan at the bow when I wanted it. I installed Navionics Platnum HotMaps in both so I could use them independtly but didn't know until I was installing them the structure scan X-ducer could be no more than one foot away from the sonars X-ducer.

You definitly do not want to spin up that 300 with a damaged prop. If I was going to have it repaired, I would send it to Bob Lipton at Performance Props. http://gbiz.org/Missouri-Yellow-Pages/St%20Charles/St-Charles-County/Performance-Propeller/6369493121/index.htm. He can tune it for you're boat and you will notice a difference. Actually, I would have him tune a brand new prop before I ran it. Rich Boger was another one that's good with them but I'm not sure if he's still around or not. He was one of the more expensive props guys but was good.