Well, last week a bonehead mis-hap resulted in a bent shaft on my trolling motor. It is a 40lb thrust motorguide. The bend did not appear to be that bad, but today, I realized how bad it was when I went to push the pedal and I was met with a LOT of resistance.  Can I use a hammer to get the thing a bit rounded out again? Can i get a replacement shaft???? Am I totally screwed?

PLEASE HELP!!!!! I've got a week to get this thing functional.

If it's already messed up try and tap it back in to shape. Then give MotorGuide a call when the motor makes you so mad that you throw down the driveway and it ends end up in about 10 pieces.

well...i've hit a wall. I've gotten down to the point where I remove the pinion gear from the shaft, so that I can remove the outer tube and re-shape it. Anyone got any experience removing these? I believe its threaded...but even with channel locks I can't seem to get it to budge....

I dont believe the are threaded. My grandad had to replace his shaft on his motorguide. I will ask him how he did it and get back to you.

I would appreciate that VERY much man!

MG sells repacement shafts.  They should be around $75.  I replaced one and went with a shorter shaft.  I didn't even think about keeping the old shaft.  I guess the dealer just kept it.  

My buddy bent his tm similar to what your describing from hitting a stump - He took it down to an exhaust shop and they bent it back with a pipebender and it has been working ever since. (dontk now if this helps but just a sugestion)

Boy does this bring back bad memories!! I bent mine during a open tournament two years ago on Champlain trying to get up on plain while the motor was down (STUPID Rookie Mistake). I ended up munching the teeth on the pinion gear and bent the lower and upper shaft. I was able to bend the lower back but had to replace the upper shaft and the pinion gear. Your gonna need to take the whole thing apart make sure you take a quick pic of how the wiring is. To get the head off mine ( Brute 767) there were 3 screw's on the bottom I ended up purchasing all the parts needed from this place http://www.mikesreelrepair.com/ they are very helpful and they should have a parts diagram of your motor if not you can just call them, there customer service is awesome. Good luck and if you need a hand gimme a hollar if I can help I will.

First of all, THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH! This has turned out to be quite a little headache, but the hardest part has been running down the parts that I have ended up needing. I am finally getting them today and hoping that everything goes on without a hitch....we'll see. However, I do want to kinda give a rundown of what I've learned, so that folks can maybe use this thread in the future for this fairly common problem. I'm also going to try to use as many of the "buzzwords" for this problem as possible so that it will be more search friendly. You guys' posts are basically the only help I've been able to get. There's not a lot in the form of instruction on the internet for this issue.

My problem started when I left the dad gum trolling motor down. At first look, i thought my only problem was going to be that I broke the top hinge on the bracket door, and I mean smooth off. Got that taken care of by simply bending the hinge pin down, and it holds just fine. Not perfect, but functional and I don't notice a difference.  Thought my problem was solved. The next time I got on the water, I put the trolling motor down and the pedal was terribly hard to turn. Oh crap. This is when I realized that the outer tube and perhaps shaft were bent. What did I do? Applied even more pressure on the pedal and got the motor to turn. I really wanted to fish that day so I fought the pedal for a couple hours and then.......SNAP. I didn't realize what it was, but I knew then that it was time to go home. Once I got home, I started taking apart the motor and the learning began.  

In order to remove the outer tube, you have to remove the pinion gear. The pinion gear is attached to the shaft and actually turns the head of the motor. This part is threaded and if you ever have to take one off, you better get out your torch. Not your lighter, and not your hair dryer, you need some serious heat to melt down the loctite to get the thing loose. I had to take it to a shop to get this part off without breaking it. We applied a torch to it for about a good solid 3-5 minutes and still had to grip the gear teeth to get it to turn. I would recommend avoiding this if at all possible because they can break, but we wrapped them with a rag before putting the channel locks on them. By the way, I did this at Twin Cities Marine in Opelika. Good people. My next boat will be a triton from these guys. Now I can get to work. Took off the outer tube and found that the best way to get it back into shape was not to beat on it with a rubber hammer, but to wedge it in between something and pull. I used my boat trailer. Did the same thing with the shaft (column). It was only slightly bent and went back into place nicely. Now again, I think I might be done. Well, I get everything almost all back together and then I see what that snap was. The steering cable. It broke off right at the rack gear. The rack gear is the gear that attaches to the steering cable and turns the pinion which turns the motor.  (now that whole rack and pinion steering thing makes sense) I wasn't sure just how the rack gear was attached to the steering cable because this is the first one I had ever seen and its broken. My impression was that it was soldered. Not true. This is a threaded fitting. Found this out by drilling out the old steering cable connection just enough to see the threads and then breaking off my bit inside, rendering the rack, if possible, even more useless. So today, I'm finally going to get the new rack and steering cable and get this dang thing put back together. All in all, not a terrible job.  We should be running again this evening! Thanks again to all of you guys for the help and advice.