Way2slow

I need to clarify my remark about the 120 to 140's being loopers. That only applies to motors 1985 and newer, that was the first year for the V4 looper. Earlier V-4's, 140's etc were all crossflows. Now if you want a real hotrod and as crazy as me, find you a 120 looper, that meets the satifies the HP rating of the hull. Then get you a 140 looper front half and a little porting work will give you and easy 175 hp. I have a 140 looper on an old Stratos 168V that making about 190 hp. Talk about a little boat that will run with the big boys. Not as fast as my Javelin but it makes a lot of people take a second look.

To be a looper it has to be a 120 - 140 hp V-4, the 100 is a crossflow The looper motors make more power, later technology. The crossflow is a good reliable motor but those little V-4s usually only come with a six or nine amp charging system. Not sure what makes the V-4's a GT, the main thing in means on the bigger V-6's is they came with a larger charging system because of the demands bass boats placed on them. They also had stiffer motor mounts. Looper and crossflow is refrenced to how the charge inters and exits the cylinder. The difference between the 100 and the 115 is the bubble back (tuned) exhaust and don't think about trying to make the 100 flat back motor a 115, totally different block and exhaust adapter. Your grandfathers 88 is basically the same motor as the 100 you're looking at. You should consider figuring $300 to replace the oil injection. The early units did have a few problems. They upgraded them in 99 and those are much more reliable, or you can disconnect it and premix your fuel if you want to be on the safe side.

Filing a prop can leave bits of the file teeth imbedded in to prop and makes welding for repair a pain. I use a sharping stone to knock any burrs off mine. As for a 5 mph loose in speed, that's very easy if you even slightly rolled the edge when you hit that rock. My boat easily looses two/three mph just from the small dings it gets when loading and sucking small rocks up through it. Another thing to consider with the time of year. If it was last fall and cool/cold water, your boat would be much faster than during summer hot water times.

For five years my daughter was one of those claims representatives you spoke to on the phone when you called GIECO. Trust me, I've heard enough stories about them, they couldn't even pay me to carry their insurance.

Hydraulic steering is normally a boat option and would not come standard on that size boat but can be added to most any size boat, just plan on paying approx $1,000 extra for the dealer to install it. Hydraulic tilt and trim is a motor option and I wouldn't have anything above a 40 hp without it and you couldn't give me a 115 without it. They are shooting you a line of BS because they probably stuck that motor on there to make a cheaper package and don't want to swap it.

No way in hell would I run that boat with any motor of any size. There is just too much of a likely hood the motor could rip itself off. Then you would have a lost or ruined motor and a boat sinking with you in it. I would not trust any aluminum plate either. I've done that a number of times on small boats with 25's or smaller but not anything with the power and weight you will be dealing with on that boat. It would just be plain crazy. The proper way to fix it would be to take the cap off and replace the transome, this would cost a few grand. An alternative, cheap fix would be to cut some of the top of the transome away, dig out the old rotted plywood and pour some the synthetic transome repair material in to refill. Just be sure to cut as little as you can get away with on the top because that part of the cap also provides a lot of strenght to the transome. This would cost less than $500 (if you did it yourself) and make a strong transome, just won't be a pretty fix but is not extremely noticable since it's back under the motor..

Not getting in on this debate but somebody had better learn a little more about their engines before they start posting how they work. A two stroke engine only takes one revolution of the crankshaft to make a power stroke (spark plug fires everytime the piston comes to TDC) a four stroke takes two revolutions (sparkplug fires every other time piston comes to TDC). Two Stroke; one piston down stroke and one piston up stroke = one revolution

That's a good one!!! That's about as good as when I went to a customers location that had been operating a piece of equiment two years but it had gotten where it wouldn't hold a charge. Said the charger cut off after about 20 minutes and it would run about 45 minutes and die again. I asked him if he had checked the water in the battery, that it sounded like the battery didn't have water. He got this dumbfounded look on his face and replied "you have to put water in them".

Have him fix it and get it running or walk away from it. If you can't start it and try it out there could be all kinds of problems you don't know about that could easily cost you $1000 to find out after the fact. Are you sure he said starter and not stator. Depending on the type motor, the stator is what generates the initial voltage that eventiualy fires the plugs. Goes through another process or two but it's the originating source.

Have you ever considered just buying a manual?? They are only about $30.

slowing down might work on a light boat, but I've never had any luck with it on a heavy glass boat. You can even chop the power at full power, let it settle and just as the back starts to settle, give it a little gas for a few feet to keep ahead of the back wash and then you can get up and get ready to start fishing. After you get used to it, you don't even have to look back, it all becomes automatic.

Unless you run the motor on it's highest setting for a long duration, the 40 should work fine. Try it, the only thing it can hurt is having to reset the breaker if it trips. If you find you're tripping it out, get the bigger one.

In the state of GA, even if it's just an electric trolling motor, they are suppose to be registerd.

Very common problem on many boats, as mentioned, you have to time it so you power up a little just before that bachwash hits it. You can't just chop the power and let it settle of the backwash my really come up your back. I will become second nature to give it a little gas just as it settles in. After that initial backwash, you can let all the way off then. My Javelin R20 doesn't do it but if I haven't used my Stratos 285 for a while, I don't forget to power up but once. That one will put water all the way into the seats if you just chop the power on it.

Maybe you can get one of the experts to explain, I don't know anything about them either so I don't get into battery/charger discussions. Like I said though, take a good paddle and don't plan to go very far just to be on the safe side.

Take a good paddle with you, you're gonna need it. I also doubt there's anything wrong with the charger. The meter is only showing the current it's putting into the battery. As the battery gains charge, the meter will gradually fall back toward zero.

Painting a boat that has gel coat is hard to do. There are very few products on the market that will stay on it. They look great to start with but after about a year, if you get a chip in the finish, that chiped place just keeps growing. What few that are available are very expensive. Awlgrip is one product that people have had pretty good succes with but like I said, it ain't cheap. Most of the pro's that really know what they are doing say if you want to sell a boat, paint it but if you want to keep it, gel coat it. Well, that's also about a $5,000 process.

You can always do like I do, put you a 3.0 on the back that's pumping over 300 hp. They will push both my Stratos and Javelin R20 into 80's. I have two 3.0 hotrod motors and a 1/2 dozen power heads I play with when I wanna go fast, and kick some Triton butt.

Jackplate is a must and I would probably go with an eight inch. After you get then jackplate on and dialed in so you can get some accurate numbers, the prop will need to be tuned. Blueprinting the hull might give you a little also. As for the motor, the exhaust ports on that motor are so restrictive they don't leave much room for big power numbers like you can get from the 3.0 motors. Reliability suffers on those also when modifing them but to answer you question, yes you can get more power but there's not much in the way of bolt on stuff thans gonna give it to you. 200 - 225 hp can be had, but it's going to cost you some hole shot and several thousand dollars. You can see if Monty does the eagle block, if not he may know someone that does. http://www.montyracing.com/. I'm pretty sure Al Stoker no longer does porting.

With a 19' - 20' fiberglass bass boat you are only a few hundred pounds short of the weight limit for a single axle trailer. They only have a 3,500 pound axle, plus close to the total weight the tires are rated for. As for pushing it around in the yard by hand, I can't even push my 18 ft Stratos that's on a single axle around in the yard, toooo heavy. My 20' Javelin is tandom axle and trust me, there is no comparison on how much better the Javelin tows over the Stratos. The tandom is also much easier to back, does not want to take off in one direction or the other. If I was going to get a 19 foot Stratos, it would have a 200 on it and if I was getting a 20' it would have a 225. Going with the max rated HP improves resale value plus you can under power a Stratos real quick. Luv the boat, but they need the HP to fully enjoy one. As for trailer brakes, they are great on the road, but if you don't tow a long distance after coming out of the water so they can dry out, they are more trouble than they are worth, the rust and freeze up. It's only five miles from the yard to the boat ramp and the brakes on my Javelin stayed frozen most of the time. I finally took them out and just put them in when I'm going to make a long trip, which is seldom now days.

Now, what is that text suppose to prove? That's nothing but an oil viscosity and contamintion test. Same test I used every three months for some 500 gallon hydraulic tanks for some giant presses at a plant I was at. At least I'm glad to know the brand new oils we buy are not full of all kinds of harmful contaminats. Look, I'm very glad you're happy with you Supetech oil. If you manage to get several hundred hours on your motor, I'm sure you're mechanic is going to be very happy you used your Supertech also. Nothing test oils like operating conditions. That's why New York City taxi cabs have always been a great testing lab for most major brands of motor oil. For me, I'm just going to keep paying my $22 a gallon, soon to be $32 a gallon if things keep going up like they are. I've seen bunches of motors with cheap oil, I've seen bunches of motors with good oil, I'll keep right on using the good oil. However, you could look at it like this, figure a big V6 burns about 1 gallon of oil every four hours. Figure you pay $17 less for oil than I do. If you can get 500 hours out of you motor, you saved about $2000 to pay your mechanic. Since it only cost about $4,000 to have a big V6 rebuilt, you get your rebuild at half price. Of course now if you go with factory remaned power heads, they are about $6000+ so the saving aren't so great.

They were invented thousands of years before the outboard, are usually four to five feet long and are called paddles.

Right out of MotorGuides manual Circuit Protection MotorGuide recommends installing a 50 amp manual-reset circuit breaker in line with the trolling motor positive leads within (1.8 m) 72 inches of the battery(s). To order a circuit breaker kit, contact your local Service Dealer, request kit number MM5870. Wire Size For optimum performance, MotorGuide recommends the use of six (6) gauge (13 mm) wire if extending existing wire beyond the standard battery cable supplied with equipment.

get you a spray bottle with premixed gas and spray in the carb as it's running. If you can keep it running with the spray bottle, it's dying because it's starving for gas. That caused by any one of several things. The tank is so gummed up, it's not letting the fuel to the carb. Pour a quart of denatured alcohol in it and a hand full of small rocks and shake the hell out of it. let it sit, and shake it again. Do this several time, pour all that junk out and rinse it out with a little fresh gas. If the tank fitting screws into the bottom, take it out and clean it. The needle and seat could be sticking or the carb gummed up coming into the needle and seat. Next would be some orfices you probably don't know are there in the high speed pickup. From what you describe, I would be willing to bet money you've missed something in the fuel system and it's not getting fuel.

There is always the posiblity the compression washers in the bottom were too dried out and broke to pieces. There is also the possibility they were letting air leak by them and when you stop the leak, the carb is too dirty to let it work like it's suppose to. Because of how old it is and the problems you run into with old, deteriated parts is why I'm not going to mess with that one I mentioned. You really should follow what I put in the ealier post and adjust the main first at WOT and then try adjusting the idle after it's warms. They can load up if the main is too far off and making the idle tough to adjust.