I bought an inflatable packable pontoon boat with a 5-7 aluminum panel deck. It lends itself to a transom mount Tm rather than retractable bow mount. Because I’d like a foot control for turning and speed (rather then continuous hand throttle control). Also I need to reverse the lower unit/prop to pull forward rather than push.
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I want to use a transom mount bracket with a foot control TM in it. And mount it on the front of the pontoon. There isn’t a foundation/deck to mount a traditional bow mount bracket and I need it to be easily detachable for removal. The purpose of putting this rig together, is that it can carry 2-3, can be easily packed up in a car/truck or camping trailer. Takes about 20 minutes to assemble.
Figure out a way to mount a Minnkota Vantage on the front. With all the added weight of the motor + batteries and everything I don’t know how “portable” this thing is going to end up being.
Have you looked for a Facebook group for this yet? I’m guessing somebody somewhere has already done what you are trying to do.
Figure out a way to mount a Minnkota Vantage on the front. With all the added weight of the motor + batteries and everything I don’t know how “portable” this thing is going to end up being.
Have you looked for a Facebook group for this yet? I’m guessing somebody somewhere has already done what you are trying to do.
I hear you. Thought I’d use one 12volt lithium battery. The pontoons fit into one heavy bag and the decks and rails in two others.those bags are 16in by 12in and five foot long. Most inflatables you sit in not on. It’s an experiment! lol
Don’t know if this will work on newer motors.
I reversed the power wires inside a MK35 to reverse the spin
when I moved it from the transom to the bow.
Pulled way faster than it ever pushed the 14 foot A1.
One could make a bracket to hang a quick release plate on. Mabey attach it perpendicular to the front so you don’t loose floor space when the trolling motor is stored. This might make deploying and storing a pain.
I don’t understand the details behind your comment about needing to alter the prop to provide a pulling action rather than a pushing action of the motor. There is no difference in the orientation of the lower unit between pushing mode and pulling mode in regard to which way that lower unit moves through the water, and thus there is no difference in what kind of prop is used. The “nose” of the motor housing always leads the way and the prop is always at the rear. Thus, the prop is always pushing (relative to the motor housing), even if the motor is orientated on the boat in a way that you would call it “pulling”. I hope that made sense.
Every foot-control I’ve seen (which I admit hasn’t been a lot) allows you to clamp the motor shaft anywhere among the 360 degrees of possible positions, eliminating any difficulty with setting up the orientation of the motor. This will naturally be true for any method you devise for clamping the top portion of your foot-controlled motor.
Years ago I built a custom clamp for a foot-controlled motor so that it could clamp to a transom in the same way as a tiller motor would do. That sounds like a solution that would do the job for you, but the clamp would attach to the front in your case. If you can’t build such a clamp yourself, describe your needs to any local welding shop and they can build you one very easily. When I built mine, I actually used hardware from a store-bought transom clamp in order to provide a ready-made adjustment system for making sure the motor shaft was vertical, but you won’t need that if you just build the clamp to accommodate the geometry of your planned point of attachment (no switching the motor between different boats).
By the same token, you could do what I think ‘Rodwork’ was describing, and make a mount for a standard bow bracket which folds up to retract the motor from the water. I’ve had two different bow-mount motors on my ancient little fishing boat, and for both of them I had to add special hardware for building a “bridge” on which to mount the rear part of the folding bow bracket (there’s no “deck” to attach that bracket to on my boat). Again, your local welding shop or machine shop might be your best friend in coming up with a related idea for your boat.
Am I missing anything?
As to the idea of reversing battery polarity, that’s not such a good idea (assuming it can even be done on modern motors with electronic controls) because motor props are much less efficient when spinning in reverse. They have that unique shape that optimizes the natural “outward flinging” of the water along the blades, including that backward sweep relative to the direction of spin, for good reasons. Also, props for modern trolling motors are extremely weedless but they are the opposite of weedless if they spin backward! But as described above, there should be no need to reverse the direction of propeller rotation in the first place.
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