Way2slow

Like most anything else, just depends on who you talk to. When you see a $3,500 lower unit busted because of one, you might question why you had it. I haul mine on the trailering mount built into the motor. I don't use transome savers because I've seen the damage they can do to the motor. Most all modern motors are designed to hauled on the trailering mount and that's where most recommend it be hauled. If your boat's transome can't handle it, I don't want to be on the water in it because I can assure you, the stressed placed on it by the motor running is a hellavalot more than any thing the road is going to put on it.

I would strongly suggest you talk to a few people that have electric jons set up for electric only tournaments. You're talking about running TM's that big, on high with only two batteries, I'm affraid you might be in for a rude awaking the first time you hit the water on a lake that has any size to it. I don't think they even make 70# and bigger TM's in 12 volt models so you will need at least two batteries for each TM and if you are thinking you're going to run two big TM's like those off the the same two batteries, be sure to take a partner and two paddles so you don't have to paddle back by yourself. Transome mounted motors are a royal pain if your trying to cast and control the boat if any wind at all is blowing. A bow mount is almost going to be a must. Then if you don't have something on the transome, it's going to want to keep coming around you.

try here http://www.highvoltagebassanglers.com/images/johnboats/06_jonboat.jpg This is a pick of an electric jon but go to their website should give you everything you need.

About the only time I have a preference is when working close with a spinner bait, then I prefer the starboard side. I'm keeping my rod tip down and pretty much just roll casting short distances about as fast as I can. Doing this the trolling motor gets in the way when using the port side. Oh, I guess I should also mention I'm left handed. As for depth finder location, I always put mine off center on which ever side the trolling motor is on, which is usually the port side. That way is the most out of the way, yet easily readable

It would take me a while to remember all the boats I've had since I bought my first one in 1965. Well, actually my first was a 17' Grumman canoe I bought in 62. I've always had extremely fast for their day and most all were overpowered. For a number of years I stuck with 17' size boats because I could put a 200 on them and run in the 70's with no problems. For the past 20 years I haven't had a boat that would not run at least 70+ mph. About 15 years ago I got my first 18 1/2' boat and thought those were great. Then about five years ago I bought my first 20' boat a Javelin R20. Now I don't think there's any way I would even want to drop back to an 18 1/2'. I kept my 285 Pro for several years thinking it would make a nice boat just to keep at the lake but when we went, we always used the Javelin so I gave the Stratos to my son. I just nice to be able to ride comfortable at 75 mph and have plenty of room to move around on the decks. As for aluminum boats, I have a 15' Fisher with a 50 Johnson I use in the river and I guess I'm just too old for those tin cans. I took it down to the St Johns river a couple of times bream fishing and it would take 20 minutes for my eyeballs to quit bouncing every time the water got a little choppy. After the second trip, I either took my Stratos or Javelin. I'm not a tin can man.

They are very simple to install. Sit in the seat, figure out what a comfortable placement would be for you and mount it to the floor. Run you cable back to the motor, disconnect the current throttle cable inside the motor, adjust and connect the hot foot cable. Adjust the hot foot stop and cable so the carb/FI butterfly's are fully closed and are fully open at WOT without going past fully open. Getting the cable and stops properly adjusted are the hardest part about the whole installation. Just be very aware of the fact that when you drill the four holes for the mounting screws you are over a very thin part of the floor (not much air space between floor and hull) so you want to be sure the drill bit only goes slightly more than the lenght of the mounting screws. I've known a couple of people that did not think about that and drilled through the hull. You can leave the existing cable in the motor or pull it back and just fold it around in the battery compartment.

Main advantage is driveability, which also equates to safer operation. When your running at high speeds, 60+ mph you pretty much need both hands on the steering wheel. Start getting fast enough to chine walk and it would almost be impossible to drive without both hands on the wheel. Get into rough choppy water and you need good throttle control and both hands on the wheel. Yea, if your thrown out the throttle returns to idle but you're suppose to have you're saftey lanyard connected so it completely kills the engine if that happens.

While I'm on here, I will try to explain your basic test with an ohm meter. First check the charge coils. All four of these are built into the timer base so it's easy to ohm out. The timer base is a round dougnut looking thing around the crankshaft and has the aluminum arm mounted to it that your throttle linkage hooks to Disconnect the five wire connector between power pack and the timer base. This will be the cable that comes out with that aluminum arm. holding one lead of your ohm meter on terminal E of the timer base and place the other test lead on each of the other terminals. I think the book says you will get about 40 ohms on each terminal but I've seen 80 as long as they all check the same. Now connect the black common test lead on your meter to the aluminum arm of the timer base and read all five terminals and make sure none of them give a reading on the 2K scale. Next check your charge coil resistance. This is a single coil on the stator and has a two pin connected between it and the power pack. Disconnect the connector and check the two terminals on the coil end to 500 - 600 ohms. Again, it may read 700 with your meter. You would check the charge coil voltage by connecting the meter between terminals A and B in this connector but since you don't have a peak voltmeter, don't try the voltage checks because they would not be accurate, but usually the resistance test will come close to telling you if it's good or not.

Your automotive buddy is not going to have a peak voltmeter, he would never have a need for one. If you know someone in an electronics lab, they might have one. Their use is much more common in electronics than anything else. A good O-scope can be used but then again, who do you know that has one and knows how to use one. The power packs have a black/yellow wire on terminal D in the four pin connnector . Push that terminal out of the connector (either end) so it can't make connection when plugged together (push it out, if you try to pull it out it will most likely break the wire because it's very tight in there). See if you have fire to the plug wires then. If the motor happens to start, the ONLY way you can shut it off is to choke it down or start pulling plug wires off. OMC motors generate all their own ignition voltage and those wires ground it out to cut it off. Without them being connected, there is no way to ground them. Disconnecting the battery and any other wire will do nothing for you.

I'm not going to say the stators don't go bad, but I seriously doubt you checked it properly. To check the voltage, you need a peak voltmeter or an adapter for your standard voltmeter so it will read peak voltage, and I not talking about a meter that has peak hold, not the same thing. Even if you try to do the resistance checks, you're not going to get the readings they say in the manual because they use a specific OMC meter and I've never had a fluke or any other meter that gives the reading the book says you should get even when checking known good coils. Also, as for the stator, their are only a couple of coils on it that affect ignition voltage. I've seen more timer bases go bad that I have stators. If I had to take a blind guess, I would suspect a powerpack before either of the other two. I've also seen more than one power pack replaced simple because the something had the kill leads shorted to ground. Basically, what it boils down to, unless you have infinit wealth, buying ignition parts is a very expesive way to trouble shoot a problem. For your water circulation problem, it's very common for water to leak between the LU and midsection. The easiest way to check and see if there's a problem about the water pump is to take the lower unit off and connect a hose directly to the copper tube that goes into the top of the pump. While you have the LU off, install a new impeller if the rest of the pump is in good shape, or install a rebuild kit thinks look cracked and aged. There is a copper tube between the top of the water pump and the exhaust adapter on the mid section. It's slides into rubber grommets on both ends. I've never seen anything go wrong with the tube or the grommet in the exhaust adapter. I have seen the one on the water pump get damaged by people not getting it aligned properly before pushing the LU up on it.

I don't think you're going to be happy with any location you might be able to find in the front. The glass is pretty darn think there and they don't take the precautions there to try and make sure there are no air bubbles in the glass. About the only way you're going to get anywhere near a straight down shot is to carefully grind a pocket inside the hull up front. This would make the side nearest the front very thin and even though you fill it back in with epoxy, a limb hitting in just that spot could cause you a big problem. Back in the days of the old MG 15 mounts, I ground one boat like that becasue my cable kept getting cut in the mount. It makes a hellava mess with the glass dust and I alway thought about that spot everytime I put the front into a tree top, wondering if I was going to have a big hole before I got back out. As for mounting it in the sump, don't think you will be happy there either. Tried that and it bugged the crap out of me trying to fish underwater cover when you can't tell if it's right below you or 20 feet away or trying to work the drop off of creek channel. I fish a lot of deeper water and that proved unusable.

What kind of boat, can you get a straight shot down, and how thick is the fiberglass and is it nothing but fiberglass, a lot of hulls us wood and other materials between layers of fiberglass in the hull layup . They leave the sump area at the rear of the boat free of any other fillers and try to avoid having air pockets so have a good through the hull location to mount a transducer. Get up toward the front and this is not the case. Now, if you're talking about mounting you're transducuer back there, then you are already the length of the boat over anything the depthfinder is going to pickup. I like mine so it's looking directly under me when I'm in the front. The puck style mounted with a large SS clamp and the wires properly routed and secured up the shaft and down the mount works great. You can get a TM with the Xducer already built in, and not have to worry about the cable.

The way the MK has to ramp up is one of the main reason I don't like them. A friend of mine has the MK on his and if we know were going to be fishing lilly pads, hydrilla etc, we use my boat. You get wrapped up and I can flip mine on high and it will usually clear itself, his won't. You spend more time reversing and forwarding the motor or pulling it up to clear it than you do fishing. In fact, if were are in his we've got where we usually stay along the edge rather than trying to work pockets over in the stuff.

I'm with cart7, I would not even want to be on the same lake as you when you're running single cable steering in a 201. The factory installed dual cable for a reason and it wasn't just so they could charge more money. I replaced the cables in a friends 94 201 three years ago and they weren't that bad to replace but you're still looking at over $300 for two new cables. As mentioned, now would be a great time to look into upgrading the hydraulic steering. It will be some of the best money you can spend. That 201 I replaced the cables in three years ago needs at least one new one again. You can barely turn the dang thing. If you don't have a jackplate and have any plans on adding one, you should look at getting 14' cables. If your's are the same as my friends they are 13'

The 285 is a very nice size boat. It fishes a lot bigger than the size it is. I personally would not want anything smaller. For many years I fished out of boats in the 17' size range and they all seemed to small. The 285 had decks big enough to move around on and still had plenty of storage room. I also hope neither are dual console. Dual consoles are great for your partner but in that size boat, they totally suck when it comes to being fishing boat.

If I was buying one of those two, with that motor on the Ranger, it would rot to the ground. I would go with the Stratos in a heartbeat. Not sure why you don't think the quality of the Stratos is not equal to those other boats. It may not be as plush as the Ranger or the Champion, but the quality is ever bit as good. I would personnaly take it over a similar size Ranger. They ride good, and they haul ***. Oh, and don't take this wrong and think a dead set against the early fichts. I happen on own a 1999 225 ficht and love it, but it's the 90 degree V-6 and I have had all the upgrades done to the ecm that fixed the problems that pleagued them. The 200 and 225 are good motors but they require a lot of special care that most people would never do.

The 2000 Ranger, you say has a 175 E-Tech. What year is that motor? They did not make the E-Tech in 2000, only the ficht. If it is the 2000 ficht, it's the 60 degree motor second to the V-4's, they were the worst motors made in the fichts back then. Now if it is the E-Tec, it's a later model motor than the boat. So, if it is truely the E-tec, and not the ficht, then I would have to say what ever trips your trigger. Yes you get the bragging rights saying you have a Ranger, but that 285 Pro XL is a hellava boat and it's five years newer. It fishes much larger than any 18.5 boat I ever had. It actaully had more storage room than my current 20' boat. They are fairly fast also.

Do a little homework before you buy anything. For a Trolling motor, I would stronly suggest you look into the Digitals. Cabela's has the MotorGuide 45# Varimax Digital for $170. If your a MinnKota fan then look at the Traxxis 40 with Digital Maximizer. The reason for paying almost double to get a digital is it will greatly increase your run time from your battery as long as your partial thrust. When running at max thrust there's no big difference. You've gotta remember run time on the water is only what the amp hour rating of the properly charged battery is and the amp draw the Trolling motor is putting on it. At half thrust the digitals are only drawing about half the current a standard TM is drawing, yet you're still getting the same speed. Jump out their and run on max speed and in less than two hours you will be paddling. Think hard about what you want from a battery also. Run time only comes from one thing in a battery, the Amp Hour (aH) Capacity, PERIOD. Batteries that are going to give you the absolute max aH, thus run time are flooded cell batteries, the ones that have removable caps so you can add water. In the flooded cell batteries you are going to want a good brand with the highest amphour rating you can get. Typically a good Group 24 gives approx 80 aH, a Group 27 gives 105 aH and a group 31 gives 120 ah. In your case you will want to get a Deep Cycle only battery. One easy way to tell is if it has Cranking Amps on the label, it's not a true Deep Cycle, it's a dual purpose. Dual purpose will work, but for TM only use, the true Deep Cycle will last longer and give longer run times. The batteries that are going to cost you the most and give you the least amount of run time are the AGM's. These are the ones like the Opitmax's. They also require a special charger designed to charge AGM batteries, which ain't all that bad because you need a good charger to get max life from your battery and good chargers usually have an AGM mode built into them. For a charger. I would also recommend you try to stay away from the manual or the ones that just say Automatic. The main thing they are best at is cooking a battery if you forget to take it off at the end of the charge cycle and then forgetting to put it back on about once a month when not using the battery. If you get a good Intelligent or Smart charger, they have a digital controlled charge cycle and will drop into a float mode when the battery is fully charged. These can be left on the battery 24/7 and are by far the best for charging any battery. You will see all kinds of recommendations on how to charge your battery, trickle, slow etc. Amost ALL manufactors recommend a 1C charge to to properly charge a battery. That means you should charge a 100 aH battery at 10 Amps. Yep, all this will cost you a few dollars more, but will save you in the long run.

Go on line and check your state laws. 99% most likely they will be required after sunset and before sunrise. The front will need to be the red and green, the rear will need to be white, a certain distance above the boat and visable for certain distance. It's normally a pretty healthy fine, plus just plain stupid to run in the dark without them. There is a good chance you the power wire is not hooked to the battery. Look around and see if you see some small wires with eyelets on them laying around back in the battery compartment. Also look for a fuse. If all that's good, check the switch, then the wiring. The wires on the bottom of the light sockets may have broken off.

Not going to do the exact math but if you figure on it's lowest setting your TM is burning lets say 50watts (drawing less than five amps), and that solar unit is adding two watts. What do you think?

Run the manufactors recommended octane. If that's 87 octane, then run that. Higher octane can actually hurt performance because the higher the octane, the slower it burns and if the engine is not designed and tuned to run high octane you will not get a full burn with it. I will say that if you're boat sits for a couple of months at the time and there's gas left in the tank, add at least as much high octane as whats in there. I personnaly do not run old gas because gas can break down and will loose octane very quickly. Even though I also run SeaFoam in my gas, if it's over a couple of months old, I pump it out, I will not run it through my motor. As for oil, if you're running a DFI motor or a motor with automatic oil injectection, I would run the manufactors recommended oil there also. Different oils will have differences in viscosity that can make these motors either over oil or under oil your motor. Over oiling causes greater carbon build up, and under oiling just plain ain't good for the motor. If you are premixing your oil with your gas, then Penzoil 100% synthetic is a very good choice. Now, as for the idea if it's TCW-3 oils they are all the same is pure BS but I will leave that one up to you. What it boils down to is it's your motor and you run what you what you feel comfortable with.

Every boat I've had since they came out with chart recorders and eventually LCD units have had two sonars on one Xducer in the front and on the console. When looking for bait fish, structure etc, I prefer a flasher, when fishing and just keeping track of what's below me, I use the LCD. I keep a flasher and LCD in both locations. I guess from that comment you can tell I've been doing this a long time.

These are the best. http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/templates/links/link.jsp?id=0001110011811a&type=product&cmCat=SEARCH_all&returnPage=search-results1.jsp&Ntk=Products&QueryText=connectors&sort=all&_D%3AhasJS=+&N=0&Nty=1&hasJS=true&_DARGS=%2Fcabelas%2Fen%2Fcommon%2Fsearch%2Fsearch-box.jsp.form23&_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1 BPS also has them, as well as Graingers and several other places. They also come in different colors. Heres you a little guide for your wire and why TM don't come with huge wire guage sizes, they are not needed. Length of run (in feet) Current 0-4 4-7 7-10 10-13 13-16 16-19 19-22 22-28 0-20A 14 12 12 10 10 8 8 8 20-35A 12 10 8 8 6 6 6 4 35-50A 10 8 8 6 6 4 4 4 50-65A 8 8 6 4 4 4 4 2 65-85A 6 6 4 4 2 2 2 0 85-105A 6 6 4 2 2 2 2 0 105-125A 4 4 4 2 2 0 0 0 125-150A 2 2 2 2 0 0 0 00 Also remember, when figure the lenth of cable in your boat, if you have a 12/24 system and four cables (two neg and two pos), you have to quadrauple the lenth of one cable when running 24 volts. So, if your TM cables are 25 from battery to TM, you need to figure a 100ft, and you double the length for 12 volts so you figure 50 ft. When running a straight 24 or 36 volt motor, on a four wire system, I always connect the two positive together in parallel and the two negative together in parallel. That gives you the equivalant of a larger wire guage and cuts the length in half from what it would be if you used it the way it's installed in the boat.

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Personnaly, outher than an extra something to hold on to, I don't see where there would be any benifit, especially with a jon. The rope is only going to be laying on the boat, you're still going to have to be able to get your body up and over the transome and drag yourself over and in. This is the same thing you would have to without a rope. When freezing cold and weighted down with wet, cold weather gear, that prove to be impossilbe for an older person. I've used my motor to lift me in several times. If you have tilt and trim, just stand on the the anticav plate and press the tilt button on the side of the motor. It will pick you up and all you have to carefully get from the motor to inside the boat. If you fish alone, are overweight or not in a good physical condition to get yourself up and over the transome, a ladder could be a life saver. I think all of us that spend a lot of time in a boat has been in the water at one time or another. I jump in during the summer a lot just to cool off, but that's nothing like hitting near freezing water and weighted down with wet cloths during the winter.