Way2slow

I don't know how you measured your prop height when you set it, but it sure sounds like you either have it too high, you have spun the hub, or rolled an edge on the prop. I can't remember if a 200 on a 201 will run a 24" or if it takes a 22" but either way, something is off. A spun hub will usually not get to full speed, you can nurse them up to about half throttle or so but at some point the hub reaches the max torque it can handle and starts slipping at that point.

Lets check one thing before you get too sick. Pull the cover off, and look at the two cables on the right front of the motor. One is the shifter, one is the gas. The lever the shift cable goes on goes under the carbs and connects to a rod that goes down to the lower unit to change gears. Have someone move the shift lever on the boat back and forth while you look at the rod going down to the lower unit and make sure that rod is moving up and down also. It seem strange the prop is spinning in gear and not making any noise. Usually when something breaks, there is still metal contact and hear/feel it. What year model motor is this? If it does end up being the Lower Unit/drive shaft, it might be a lot cheaper for you to buy a good used LU from and swap them out yourself, it's really not very hard, than pay that hundreds of dollars labor and very high price for a LU or parts the dealer is going to charge.

When you spin the prop by hand with it in gear, is the nut and shaft that holds the prop on spinning also? If the nut and shaft are not turning when you spin it by hand, then you've spun the hub in the prop. Nothing serious, any prop shop can replace the hub. If the nut and shaft are turning when you spin the prop with it in gear, then you can say you've just had a very bad day at the lake, because something that's not cheap to repair is broke. The only way to fin out is pull the lower unit to check it and to make sure the vertical shaft is still good.

Anyone fishing barefoot in a bass boat is a hellava lot neater person than I am. Ain't no way I would go walking around in my boat barefooted when fishing.

Modern technology has made them more powerful and more efficient, modern construction practices and cheaper materials have made them more problematic and subject to failures.

Well, it's a little late now, but my first questions would have been, Did you check the fluid level? Did you take the bottom plug loose to see if any drops of water came out or was the gear brown/milky looking? I hate to say this but I've seen more than one perfectly good lower unit go into the shop for repair. I neighbor had paid a shop $350 to replace the seal in his lower unit because he thought it was leaking. The next time he used it and left parked in the driveway over night, it was still leaking. He said since he knew I worked on them, he was wondering if I would look at it before he took it back to the ship again. It wasn't leaking, he had been doing a lot of idling and trolling and what he had was an oily carbon residue coming out of the exhaust, running down the skegg and dripping on the driveway. So basically he threw $350 out the window. I had to laugh when he said he was going back and make them give his money back, even though I could tell the shop never did anything but clean it up and maybe pressure check it, but they didn't take anything apart.

Actually, one cause of excessive rpm is the motor too high and cavitating, also over trimming. If you've played with engine height, I would suggest you drop the motor down to about 3" below the pad and see what your rpm does. That could very easily fix the problem if you are up higher than that. Not all props and hulls can handle the motor being raised a bunch. Look at your prop and see if it looks like someone has sanded a spot in the blades about the size of a quarter or fifty cent piece.

Probably not much. With all things equal, and if running a 22" now, it would only drop you approximately 150 rpm. It would definitely have to be a try before you buy deal. With the understanding you are going to buy "A" prop, a lot of dealers will let you try a new prop before you buy it, as long as you don't ding or scratch it in any way. Larger dealers usually have a pretty good supply of good used props also. Also, is that an aluminum, I seriously doubt you want to go to an aluminum if it is. Most three blade SS props are in even numbers, and four blade SS and aluminum are in odd numbers.

Replacing carpet is as easy or as hard as you won't to make it. If you want to follow most of those how to guides that use a carpet glue, of any kind, then yes, it can be very hard and a royal pain. If you want to throw all that crap out and use contact cement, pay attention to what you are doing, and with a roll of wax paper, it's no problem. It's a little work, but it's not difficult to do. I've done several boats over the years. I usually strip the old out and get it ready for the new one day. Layout, cut and install everything the next day, and if you want to make it a long day, you can do it in one. Now, I don't know who's directions you are trying to follow, but I hope they warned you about making sure all pieces are cut on the same bias because if they are not, it's going to make the carpet look two toned, depending on how the light hits it..

If you were not having problems before with breakers tripping and plugs heating up, you should be fine now. That motor should be pulling fewer amps than the one you took off.

Is it 24 or 12/24?. If straight 24V, then all you need is a two prong plug. Now, if you can use the same one or not depends on how much larger you went on size motors. Even though you went to 24V and should actually pull less current, if you went BIG, it may even pull more current and need to upgrade the plug/wiring and breakers. If it's a 12/24, then you will need a third wire and three prong plug

OK, you need to make sure what prop you are running right now, because if that motor has a 2.59 gear ratio and running a 21" prop, even with just 8% slip you would have to be turning 6,500 rpm. Doing a quick prop calc show you would probably want a 24" prop. That gives you 5,800 rpm, with 10% slip and running 46 mph. I'm not used to those low gear ratio's, I'm used to the 1.8 stuff.

My first question is what makes you think you are hitting the rev limiter. For that size boat with a 115 on it, a 21" pitch prop sounds about right. I think that motor has a redline of 5,750 rpm, and the rev limiter is usually a few hundred rpm above that. So unless you are turning 6,000 rpm or more, I have serious doubts about it's hitting the rev limiter. If you are not turning over 5,800 rpm, I would suspect an engine performance problem, spark plugs, plug wires, fuel system, or something along those lines, but I dang sure wouldn't be wasting my money on a prop, because if you go to a bigger prop and it's not against the limiter, you are only going to make it run much worse. Now, if you are turning 6,000+ rpm, then definitely get another prop.

Parallel a second battery if you need more run time As long as you are not in real strong winds, it should do just fine. Trying for fish points on a real windy day might get a little aggravating but other than that, I don't see any problems. 30 years ago, that was a big TM on a 17 foot boat.

Most likely several hundred dollars will need to be spent on motor if you don't know how to clean carbs a replace water pump yourself. As for the boat, as mentioned, everything under that fiberglass shell is wood and subject to be rotten. Get over in it and walk around, bouncing a little as you do and see how the floor feels. Make sure it's good and firm. Tilt the motor all the way out and stand on the mid section at the anticav plate and bounce up and down (or have someone do it for you) while you watch the transom to see if it flexes or gives in any way. I has to be solid and firm. If there is any sign of movement where the motor's mounted or across the whole back of it, it's JUNK. The next thing of concern would be the floatation foam, if it has any. Back then, they used open cell foam and the stuff was like a sponge. The biggest difference is you can get water out of a sponge, it's extremely difficult, to almost impossible to get water out of saturated, open cell flotation foam. This rots the stringers and adds a couple hundred pounds of weight to the boat. Then you want to turn the steering wheel all the way each direction to make sure it's fairly easy to turn. If it's hard, then you need a new cable and on those systems most of the time they came as a unit so you have to buy the helm with the cable. UNDERSTAND, don't think you are just going to lube it in some fashion. That ain't gonna happen, it will need to be replaced. So, if you can do the motor work yourself of have a good friend that can, and everything else checks good, then yes, $1,200 in a fare price. Also realize, that motor is a little small for that hull so don't expect no speed demon, but it will get you around.

The registration decal, the state mails to me, the letters I have made. Most sign shops the do vinyl lettering can custom cut you a set for not a whole lot more than you pay for those you buy off the shelf. In GA, they just say they have to be contrasting colors, not ugly contrasting colors, and that does not mean they have to be black on white, so I've been having mine custom cut just about ever since they started doing it. As long as you don't get too radical with the style, and keep it a very legible style, I don't think many states will say anything about using something better looking than just square block letters. I've been doing it for about 15 years, been checked a ton of times by GA, SC, TX, AL, and FL game wardens and no one has ever said a word about mine. Actually, the ones on my Javelin are not so contrasting, they are a metallic that almost blend into the stripe in one spot, and I figured they would make me change them, but it's been at least eight years and checked a bunch of times.

Those Chinese pullers will lift the engines weight with no problem, it's just when you try to use one as a flywheel puller they usually don't fare so well. The flywheel is on a tapered shaft and torques down to about 140 ft lbs so they get pretty dang attached to where they are at and don't like giving that spot up.

If you and your wife are new to boats and you plan on her riding in it, include the wife in the picking and planning. Also, if planning on it being a bass boat, make dang sure you include your wife in your plans and she goes for a ride. A lot of women DO NOT like the wind hitting them the way it does in single console bass boat. So, need to make sure that's something she is comfortable with or reconcile yourself to puttering around at no more that 30 mph when she is with you, or getting a dual console. Trust me, if the wife does not like the boat, it will probably be constant source of problems. Further North, I didn't even know they made aluminum 98 years ago.

They might make one, but I've never seen an eyebolt that screws into the OMC flywheel. A couple of options for making a lifting ring. Buy one of those cheap harmonic balance pullers, saw most of the bolt off and weld a very large washer or steel ring to the top of it. Leave enough threads so it will screw down to the crankshaft with at least another 1/2". That way it might work as a flywheel puller also. There are three threaded holes in the top of the flywheel for some SAE bolts (most are 5/16) to bolt it down to. One word of caution there also, don't use bolts too long or you can screw one down into the stator and screw it up. Also, get grade eight and some heavy washers if you ever try to pull the flywheel with it and then hope the cheap a** puller can stand the strain it's going to take to pop the flywheel loose. Next option, drill three holes in a small piece of flat steel at least 1/4" thick that line up with flywheel, drill and tap a hole in the center of it to screw a 3/8" shank eye bolt with a large enough ring to for a lift hook. Or drill at least a 3/8" hole in the center and weld a nut to it to hold the eyebolt.

12 YEARS! for a boat? I've never financed a house more than 10-15 years. I guess I just prefered to do other things with my money than give it away to finance companies.

First and foremost, a new boat is NOT an investment. If anything it's an expensive liability. As for financing, very few people buy a new boat or even a really nice used boat and pay cash for it. Now, I will say I think you fall into the sucker trap if you finance one more than four or five years because of a couple of reasons. One by the time you have paid it off, you have paid a very large amount of interest. A LOT of people do this long term financing and a couple three years later, decide the boat is a lot more expensive than they ever realized and try to sell it, but find that ain't gonna happen because they would still have to pay thousands of dollars out of their pocket to make up the difference of what you owe and what the used value of the boat is. Regardless of how nice and how well you took care of it, and finding some sucker to just take over payments usually won't happen because the bank won't approve it. Just make sure when you look at what the payments are on that piece of paper, you add a whole lot more to it for operating cost and insurance, which being financed, you will be required to have.

When I was 17 and still in High School, working at a service station after school, the First National Bank in Thomson GA financed a model A Ford I wanted to buy, on my own signature. A deal came up I couldn't pass up and I had recently spent all my cash on a band new ski boat and motor. Now, this was in 1966, a small town, and the president of the bank knew me very well. For a credit reference when I asked him if you would loan me the money , he asked me, if I going to pay it back, I said of course and he said OK, sign here.

Don't know, still trying to figure out how you fish out of one. Do they make an inflatable or something. Maybe a Transformer model, one you take it out of your tackle box and it expands out into a boat.

Don't get too wrapped up in the hp. The CC size is more important. A lot of companies use the same power head for different hp motors. If the 20 and 30 hp motors of the same make have the same CC, by the time you get the loaded to it's fishing weight, you will probably see very little increase in speed with the 30 over the 20 and both will get up on plane about the same, so it boils down to, most of the time you a paying several hundred dollars more for a couple mph. You will see them down rate motors like Suzuki did so you get power and performance of a 20, but be legal where 9.9 is the max hp allowed. Both motors are probably closed to being an honest 15hp, but they get happy with the 20 numbers and cheat the system with the 9.9 numbers if they both have the same CC rating. OMC/BRP did and still does that with their HO motors. They take a 250hp motor, down rate it to a 225 so it will be legal on a 20' bass boat and call it a 225HO. Tohatsu is a good motor. They built the some of the smaller mercs for a long time and may still do. The biggest complaint about them is the tend to get a little proud of their parts. As for what size motor, If it does not stay on the boat all the time, get the one with the most CC want to carry. If it stays on the boat, get the biggest one you can legally put on the boat and fish the waters you fish. It's hard to go wrong with the max size, but it can totally suck dealing with one too small.

I will give you my thoughts on your charger. Unless they have recently changed, the XPS chargers are made by Pro Mariner. Pro Mariner used to be a great charger, but like it seems everybody else is doing, they changed to Chinese built chargers. For years, I ran the Pro Mariner Pro Tourney three bank 30 amp chargers. Then they started failing. The first one that failed was under warranty so they were great about sending me another the next day. That one failed a couple months after the warranty ran out, I sent it in and they said the boards were out dated and couldn't be repair. I have a degree in electronics and very good with it so I asked if they could just send it back and a copy of the schematic. They said they couldn't send me the schematic but offered me a credit toward a replacement, so I went with that. The replacement failed right after the warranty ran out, they said the boards were outdated and couldn't be repaired, "again". But they could offer me credit toward a new one. That's when I told them what they could do with their outdated, non repairable charger. You know, that was about five years ago, and I never have called them back and told them they could pull it out. So, with that, I will just say I hope you have better luck with the XPS.