I am thinking about kicker motors more here and have a question. I have a couple of boat ideas that I would like to work towards, the primary being a 16ft aluminum boat with a walk-thru window. I pretty much have that nailed down as to what I am going to get, but I need to add a kicker to it. That having been said, we have a lot of rivers around here and it would be nice to be able to get on the rivers. The 16ft I'm looking at is way too big. I was thinking more along the lines of a jon boat or a smaller utility - in the 12-14ft range, narrow beam around 50-60".
So my question here is on a possible dual-purpose motor that I can use as a primary purposed kicker for the 16ft that I can also take off and run on the smaller boat.
Most of the "kicker specific" motors have lower gearing and longer lower units to spin larger diameter props than the standard motors do. I dropped the pitch on our utility boat last year and got much better loaded performance out of it, so I know a lower pitch prop can make a difference on a standard motor. However, going the other way - with a lower gear lower unit how easy is it to pitch up? Should I be concerned about even gearing down in this case and just run a smaller lower pitch prop for the kicker? How much control would I loose in doing so? I am not worried about speed on the big boat because that isn't the purpose on the kicker, I just don't want to handicap the capability on the smaller boat much. I have no reference for a lower geared motor, only two different pitch props on a 25hp.
For reference, I am looking at the eTec 15 HO.
Any thoughts?
So my question here is on a possible dual-purpose motor that I can use as a primary purposed kicker for the 16ft that I can also take off and run on the smaller boat.
Most of the "kicker specific" motors have lower gearing and longer lower units to spin larger diameter props than the standard motors do. I dropped the pitch on our utility boat last year and got much better loaded performance out of it, so I know a lower pitch prop can make a difference on a standard motor. However, going the other way - with a lower gear lower unit how easy is it to pitch up? Should I be concerned about even gearing down in this case and just run a smaller lower pitch prop for the kicker? How much control would I loose in doing so? I am not worried about speed on the big boat because that isn't the purpose on the kicker, I just don't want to handicap the capability on the smaller boat much. I have no reference for a lower geared motor, only two different pitch props on a 25hp.
For reference, I am looking at the eTec 15 HO.
Any thoughts?
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