I am shopping for a foot controlled TM to replace my hand operated one. The one I'm looking to but has a shaft advertised as 42 in, while my hand operated one looks to be appx 31 in, assuming I'm measuring it right.

When measuring the shaft for a trolling motor, where do you start and stop? Does the shaft begin at the bottom of the head, and end at the top of the prop housing?

Also, if I have a TM with a 31 in shaft, and I put on a replacement with a 42 in shaft, the main drawback is that I will limit myself to 10-12 in deeper water than I can get into now, correct? ( I won't be able to get as shallow)?

Check this out.

http://www.alltrollingmotors.com/

Hope that helps

-John

The only length you need to be concerned with is the distance between the motor and the larger shaft that has the bearning surface. The larger part of the shaft is adjustable in the bow mount.

The shaft is basically two different diameters as opposed to the single diameter of the hand contol models.

You don't have to have the head of the unit all the way down against the mount. The motor only needs to be about 10"-12" below the water's surface unless you fish in big waves.

42"  is pretty standard for bow mounts on mid sized glass boats.

The longer shaft will NOT limit you to deeper water.   The excess shaft will be above the rail of the boat per your adjustment.

With TMs two things are essential:

1.- get the most powerful you can afford

2.- get the one with the longest shaft you can find

You can never have "too much" thrust, most boat packages come with barely the smallest they can get along with and everything is fine until the wind begins to blows.

You can never have "too long" shaft, if the shaft is "too long" you can always shorten it, but you can 't do that lengthen a short shaft, everything is fine until the waves begin to grow in height.