Gheenoe Upgrades
- This topic has 42 replies, 14 voices, and was last updated Mar 3, 2013 at 2:52 pm by
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Hey guys –
I’ve been doing some upgrading on the old Gheenoe lately.
First off I found a trolling motor on the bottom of the river a few months ago.
Nice additions to your Gheenoe. I built a jackplate last year for mine and it made a huge improvement in performance. I was having similar problems as you when fishing solo. I had full intentions on adding trim tabs like the ones you made along with the jack plate. Once I got the height and angle set on the motor with only the jack plate, I no longer had the bow rise problem and opted to fish a season to see if I needed anything additional.
I am not sure how much setback you are wanting to achieve. Using 1.5″ angle will limit you to minimal setback. You have the overlap of the angle plus the fastner width and clearence to take into account. Also the width of the transom plate and where you mount it (inboard or outboard of the angle) will also change the setback.
Zach, I think you should actually claim that trolling motor through a modern interpretation of the Law of Salvage.
A tiller extension would be a simple way to start with trim problem. Also, in some of the marine catalogs there are some cheap small trim tabs that are adjustable, but not remotely, I think you’re going have trouble getting yours at the right angle and they’ll either add a lot of drag or be ineffective.
JCHere’s a link for those tabs
http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?productId=107008&catalogId=10001&langId=-1&storeId=11151&storeNum=50366&subdeptNum=50415&classNum=50416#.USaE0mt5mSM
In addition, I would try to play with your motor trim angle before adding anything like tabs, you might try shimming out the clamp with a wedge shaped piece of wood or a bunch of shingles to see how much you need. Tabs are a bandaid, they are addressing the symptom not the disease, weight distribution and prop angle are the correct ways to flatten it out.
Have fun,
JCJon –
I’m aware of all of that. My trim tabs are going to cost under $40, while those are three times more. I’ve made everything else on this boat so I may as well make these. I had considered the wooden wedge idea; we’ll see. As Chris said a lot of this is going to be dependent on what the jackplate does.
Chris I have a little bit of an option in that I can mount the actual “transom” plate either to the front or to the rear of the back of the aluminum angle bracket. Given that weight distribution is already a problem, I’m trying to keep the motor as tight as possible so as not to weight the teeter totter any further.
Zack,
Your motor weight is only 108lb, say thirty six more than the two stroke, if you move three feet forward with a long tiller extension you’ll more than compensate.
If your cavitation plate is below the line of the bottom you should raise the motor, Chris’s post indicates he was able to fix the whole problem with prop depth and angle and a couple of inches setback isn’t going to change trim appreciably.
The real purpose of trim tabs is to extend the planing surface, if it seems to be only the solution, I would want as much as I could get for my efforts, probably 10″ wide and make it line up perfectly flat with the bottom with a smooth transition, otherwise you will be incouraging bad manners in the water and causing drag.
JC
JCI went back and looked at the other boat with the tabs and realized how very narrow the bottom is, so you really couldn’t put on a wider tab, however, I certainly would NOT recommend canting the tabs downward so they’re digging into the water like those in the picture, they might drop the bow, but at high expense in speed and boat handling, they would make poling horrible because the boat would always want to pivot around them, like a sea anchor,and they’d pull the transom down when backing up with the motor, not a well thought out solution.
JCAside from the extra weight when poling why would 2-3 50# bags of sand up front not solve this issue?
Another idea is a hydrofoil that fits to the cavitation plate, they apparently provide quite a bit of lift, are cheap, are out of the water when poling, and require no holes in your boat.
http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/SiteSearchView?PopularCat=No&langId=-1&Nao=0&catalogId=10001&viewTaskName=SiteSearchView&beginIndex=0&Ne=2000000&storeId=11151&page=CategoryDisplayLevel1&N=377+710+2050417&icid=HD_BKM_Hydrofoils
JCAside from the extra weight when poling why would 2-3 50# bags of sand up front not solve this issue?
I was gonna suggest one more dog.
I’d think the foil and motor tilt would be the easiest way to go.
Zach- I used 4 pieces of 3″x3″ aluminum angle and slotted one pair for vertical adjustment. For a transom plate I used 4 layers of uhmw which gave me a couple of inches adjustment front to back. I spent a morning on a local lake adjusting height, setback, and motor angle until I found a setting that worked well for my setup.
Zach-
I was lucky and sourced the uhmw from a local supply house. I was going to purchase uhmw cutting boards if i had trouble finding the material. I was concerned with the motor popping off after reading warning after warning on the CG site and your own personal experience.
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