After bringing the Tohatsu home after last weekend's outing, I muscled it back onto my stand and tried to get that lower unit off. Still nothing. I decided to see what I could see anyway, and removed the middle covers, which exposed the exhaust as well as the water tubing that came out of the midway point of the leg. I popped it off the motor side, and slowly sprayed water down into it to see what would happen. To my surprise, water came out of two smaller holes just above the cavitation plate. Well, that's interesting, I thought. So I put everything back together, and put a 50 gallon trash bucket in place, filling it with water above that level. Then I decided to try the electric start, so I grabbed that 'junk' battery the seller had thrown in. Finger tight on the posts, and pressed the button. Not only did it instantly fire up, but also had an instant steady stream of water.
Well, that was rather annoying. All that mess from last week and it turns out it was just because we didn't have enough water in our buckets! Though, it's probably for the best that it didn't work, since as I started to research it, the existing motor mount I had was woefully undersized for the weight of this 4-stroke. Rated for up to 85 pounds of 2-stroke fury, and holding a Merc that came in at 70 lbs, it would be no match for this 120 lb monster. The search was on.
Shortly after, I found a gentleman selling a Panther Marine lightweight 4-stroke mount. They sell two versions of the same model - the lightweight for up to 132 lbs, and a standard one that carries a little more, but for what I have, that was perfect. And the price was right, at half retail for a barely used example, so I ran up and snagged it as soon as I could.
So that gave me a project for this weekend. I would go up to the boat, pull the Mercury off and swap the mount, and if I couldn't get the Tohatsu mounted, I could at least bring the Merc home to list for sale, and then worry about getting the other on when there are plenty of people around to help in two weekends. Surely, this can't be that hard, right? First order of business was to see how bad the Mercury would be to start. It's always been a pain after it sits, but it seemed ok last weekend. And 5 pulls later, it started with no fanfare. I almost felt bad that I was going to pull it from the boat, but it was for a better purpose, I told myself. I motored out into the bay, swapped my fenders and dock lines to the starboard side and came back, backing stern-in to the slip. That was a first for me, like, ever. I couldn't imagine doing that in any sort of a blow, that's for sure. I tied the boat off tight on the three corners I could, and with a 4th as a spring line to keep the boat as stable as I could, and with the outboard as close to the dock without hitting it. Removing the old motor was surprisingly non-eventful, almost felt light. I set it aside on the dock, and took a last look at the old mount on it's last outing.
Poor thing, it's almost surprising it's made it this far. Even getting this far, I was already shirtless and chugging bottles of water. It's nice to have the extra power and capacity to run my plug-in cooler. While not quite a fridge, it does still keep water cool enough to be refreshing, especially on days like this. Removing the old mount was just a matter of zipping off the old nuts with my Ryobi driver and a socket, tapping the bolts out and the hard part was done. Wait, maybe that was the easy part. As luck would have it, the new mount and old share the same mounting pattern. But the old bolts looked to be maybe 5/16", and seemed to be just a tad loose in the holes. So, to Lowes we go! I picked up 8 stainless 3/8" carriage bolts and lock nuts, and lunch, and headed back. When I went to feed them through, that set the tone for the rest of the weekend. The bolts wouldn't quite fit through the holes. Well I was committed to using bigger hardware, so out came the drill. I drilled out the holes just enough to feed the bolts through, and then drilled holes in a piece of aluminum sheet that I had with me to use as a backing plate. My mistake was drilling them after using the mount as a pattern, instead of putting the bolts through the boat first. Since all the bolts aren't drilled at a perfect perpendicular angle, they didn't line up afterwards. I made do with a poly sheet that I had, and some trimmed off stock of the aluminum just to get things in place. At that point, I had enough of the sun and heat, and thankfully was getting later in the evening, so I called it a night, killing time by playing on the laptop for a while, watching videos, and killing bad guys in a game.
Sunday morning... I woke up at 5:30 for no real reason, and only managed another couple hours after that. Deciding that 6 hours of sleep was enough, it was time to drag myself out of bed and get after it again. Step one was to finish up the backing. I crawled into the starboard cockpit locker (that's not easy by the way), and wedged some pressure treated 2x something dimension back along the transom to help with the compression the new bolts would have between the layers of the hull, and then got everything in place. At this point, I'm already sweating, and even a walk down to the lake and dunking my head in didn't do much to help that out.
Now I'm at a cross roads. What do I do with this Tohatsu? It's not exactly light, and I'm not exactly into lifting. But I don't want to take it all the way home again, along with the Mercury, and all the gas cans and so forth. I muscled it out of the car, and set it on the ground, catching my breath again and again. I pulled the Mercury farther up the dock, to feel like I was accomplishing something. I finally thought, might as well try, and lifted the Tohatsu up again, left hand on the handle, right hand under the leg, and be damned if I didn't feel like this:
Now I'm at a cross roads. What do I do with this Tohatsu? It's not exactly light, and I'm not exactly into lifting. But I don't want to take it all the way home again, along with the Mercury, and all the gas cans and so forth. I muscled it out of the car, and set it on the ground, catching my breath again and again. I pulled the Mercury farther up the dock, to feel like I was accomplishing something. I finally thought, might as well try, and lifted the Tohatsu up again, left hand on the handle, right hand under the leg, and be damned if I didn't feel like this:
Granted, that stone is 409 lbs, and I was less than a third, but considering I'm 1/3 his size, it's appropriate, right? But that was basically my mindset as I started down the ramp onto the dock. One more step. One more step. One more step. Finally, after what seemed like forever, I was able to rest.
For those curious, yes, that is the correct position to lay this down, if laying flat. It even says so on the sticker, not that you might be able to make it out. I took the Merc up to the grass and it's accompanying gas tanks, all in plastic garbage bags, including the motor and the mount. Spiders at the marina like to find the crevices and hide, and on more than one occasion I've had them pop out of corners of the car after transport, usually at about face level. And the tanks like to vent gas during trips and even with a tarp under to catch. That makes it fun to drive, getting all light headed and things. Back to the dock.
I really didn't want to leave the motor not installed, but I was conflicted at how to get this thing into place. I didn't want to go through the hassle of removing the solar panel in order to use a halyard to support the weight, so I thought maybe if I ran lines from the cockpit winches and cleats, back over the center of the transom, they could support the motor once I swung it off the dock. This tuned out to be harder to set up than I thought. Throw in the mix the half-confidence I had in my ability to lower the motor down onto the motor from the dock. It was a lot easier to pull the Merc off the mount since I was straight on to it, so how much worse could the extra 50 lbs be, right? I tied off a line to a cleat and around a winch to the handle of the motor and had it as tight as I could from that angle. Now or never. I slid the prop over the edge, and tilted the motor up. If you look in that picture, you can see the angled cover piece that comes from the leg up to the cowl. As luck would have it, as I started to slide the motor forward, that piece slid down the edge of the dock, and acted as a wedge to push the front of the motor perfectly into position over the mount. Don't get me wrong, it was still a lot of muscle to guide and not drop, but it went a lot better than it could've.
I used a piece of 1/4" thick aluminum flat stock and drilled two holes in it to match up with the pegs on the clamp screws where the cups normally would've been attached. This allowed the bottom of the threads to exert force on the bar, and then into the mount. It tightened up nicely, and I really don't expect it to go anywhere though I suppose if I really wanted to, I could tap into that bar, thread it, and then install some bolts through those holes to line up with the patchwork of holes on the backside of the mount which I presume are there for weight savings. Having a bolt stuck through and into one of those holes would ensure that even in the worst situation, the bar couldn't slide around or move. For now though, it will work fine.
Time for a test run. I installed the battery into the cockpit locker where there's a perfect spot for it. And then my electrical leads for the starter were too short. Of course they are. So, lifted the battery back out, and set it on the seat, wired up, and the motor started right up. After locking the lift lever so it couldn't kick up in reverse, I untied the lines and putt-putt-putted out into the bay once more to swap slip gear back to the other side. The difference between motors is night and day. Whereas the Mercury took a moment to stop momentum and change direction, especially from forward to reverse while underway, and would slow to a crawl when at idle, the Tohatsu idles along at what feels like about a knot and a half. I didn't have my phone up to check, but it moved quite a bit without even touching the throttle. This will make the already-improved efficiency even more so, if I barely need throttle to get where I'm going. Granted, it means taking more caution coming into the slip, needing to cut back to neutral a little sooner to let the speed slow. But at the same time, a couple short blips in reverse (reverse-neutral-reverse-neutral) was all it took to all but stop the boat from that speed. I'm not sure what prop is on this one versus the Merc, but between the low end torque of the 4-stroke, the extra 50% power, even if they're identical, it's a world of difference. I tied back up to the slip, put everything back in relative order and dragged my exhausted butt through loading the car back up. I took a shower, progressively turning the warm water to the cold direction because that's exactly what you want when you're turning a little extra red, and it's been that hot all weekend.
Home to unload the spider palace that was the Mercury, I tossed it on the stand, hosed everything off, gave it a wipe down and took some pictures, throwing it up on Facebook marketplace for sale with the two tanks and whatnot. If all goes well, should be someone coming at noon tomorrow for it. Works out rather well, that way.
Parents use the phrase "I'm gonna tan your hide." I know it's Father's Day and that seems like a privilege they are entitled to, but I'm pretty sure the sun beat you to the punch today. So now my tanned hide is going to pass out, because I think I've done about all I can do this weekend.
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