trolling motor transom or bow mount?

[ronboonville]

I have a 1984 travler by sea nymph, kinda heavy aluminum boat, I have a transom mount minn kota 55D, It doesn't do very good, I bought it used at a yard sale. I'm thinking it might do better if i was bow mounted. Do you think I could just rotate the head to make it a bow mount? I assume the 55 means 55lbs. thrust. Does it need to be below the bottom of the boat? It's a real b#tch trying to steer it when any wind is present, like 10mph wind. I don't do much trolling because I'm not sure what the heck I'm doing. Just have it on boat for disasters like main engine quitting. Just really want to use it to get into shallow areas and docking stuff like that. Any advice appreciated, thanks, ron

 

[NYBo]

Re: trolling motor transom or bow mount?

The boat will probably be easier to control with it bow mounted, but if it's too weak at the stern, moving it to the bow won't fix that.

Minn Kota has been puting the thrust rating in the model number for a while, but wasn't always the case. I haven't been able to find anything regarding the rating of the 55D.

If you can't get the prop well below water, it's going to ventilate every time a wave comes by.

EDIT: I was able to find out that this motor uses the same prop as the 65 series, which was rated for 28#, IIRC. Therefore, I'm guessing the 55 is something like 23#. That's not going to be enough to move your boat very well.

 

[sccatfish]

Re: trolling motor transom or bow mount?

I have an old Minn Kota 35 that says it's actually 17 lb thrust. I actually found a post where someone says that they have an old model 55 that is 23 lb thrust so it looks like the poster above is spot-on. You'll benefit greatly with a more powerful motor.

As far as switching the head around, yes you can do that. I've done that on multiple motors and it even says you can do that in the owner's manual of the most recent motor I've purchased. The main thing you have to watch out for is to make sure you don't pinch the wires when you put the bolt back through and that you don't twist them too much if you switch back and forth multiple times.