A whole lotta effort

You know when the best time to do lots of physically intensive boat projects is? When it's 90+ degrees out and no cloud cover. So that's what I did this weekend.

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:

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.

2 or 4

This was a strange weekend. More ups and downs, though mostly ups. I touched upon my outboard saga briefly last post, but the highlights are that my Mercury9.9 hp 2-stroke was having difficulties running correctly. It was missing every so often, and wouldn't shift into reverse without dying out. This is the same outboard that has been notoriously difficult to start. And by difficult, I mean last season there were days it would take me what felt like 10-15 minutes of cord-yanking to start. So, those memories fresh in my mind along with the new issues of running prompted me to hit the outboard listings of Craigslist. First, let me be clear; I like that Mercury. When it was running, it was running fine. It has a tiller shift - turn it one way, it goes into Forward and the other was Reverse. You never had to move your hand off the tiller to change direction. This comes in really handy when trying to maneuver slowly in tight quarters, or when you need the left hand on the boat tiller and the right on the outboard. And when it did run, prior to this, it ran reliably. Sure it was a bitch to start, but it never gave any hassle once running. But it seemed as it's time had come to an end after all. It's a 1988 model, so it made it over 30 years. I know that's infancy in outboard years, but still. I will also add another note to this. My brother obtained a Mercury about the same size, maybe a little older? If so it wasn't by much. Now, on the whole, there aren't lots of pieces to these things. Carbs are simple, make sure you have spark, and that's more or less it. It's also why it's maddening when all the things don't seem to work. And my brothers was that way. It would run great on a test stand but the moment it had an actual load, it would bog out and die. Tear into it, nothing to be found, but the results never change. So as popular as Mercury motors are, it seems maybe we're cursed when it comes to that era of them.

I stumbled across a listing for a 2007, 15 HP Tohatsu 4-Stroke, sold by someone just North of Syracuse which puts it on almost a direct route along the way to the boat. Happy day, right? No issues, also has electric start, decent price for what it was. A slight miff when it seemed like even after we had agreed I would be up that Saturday (the 13th), later in the week he was still trying to show the motor to whomever would get there first. Thankfully that didn't happen and my dad and I were able to stop on our way up to the boat. No real good bucket to fit over the lower end of the unit but he did have a tote that we propped up under it while it was on his stand, filled it to the brim which just covered the cavitation plate, and after he revealed he hadn't run it in two years (missing from the ad, of course), it started on the third pull. The battery he had, he said was dead, so it was pull starting instead. Three pulls, it started. Can't argue with that. But no water shooting out from the cooling outlet. No 'pissing'. Well, ok, that's an impeller issue. I had already watched videos of the Tohatsu line-up ahead of time. It's disconnecting the shift linkage, and four 1/2" nuts and the lower unit comes off. Cake. Ok, the price was still decent and considering how smooth it ran for the moment it ran, I made the deal. We loaded it into the back of my car, and headed to the boat.

This is where the weekend got back into the downs, part. Earlier in the week, I had inquired to the marina about the WiFi password, why my boat was back on A dock and would I be getting a credit for the difference, and lastly - most importantly - would the yard guy be able to drop my mast so I could straighten out my halyards. Initially unsure if he was taking the weekend off (and ok, seriously? I mean, I'm all for days off, but... come on. Wrong industry, honestly.), she did say he would be around and would reach out to get with me about it. Ok. Phew, I thought.

When I got to the boat, I noticed that my halyards were no longer twisted in the spreaders. Ok, so that's half the issue solved, must be he did that at some point. But, they still weren't cleared of the forestay attachment, which was the more pressing issue. And he was nowhere to be found. I don't know if he cleared them from the spreaders so that he could then take the weekend off anyway, or what. What I do know, is that it annoyed me. But I decided that it wasn't going to stop the weekend from trying to be a good one. We unloaded the Tohatsu from the back of the GL, and the homemade engine stand that I had brought along. Pulling the prop off the engine, we rigged up a 5 gallon bucket underneath, and tried starting again. Still no water. Ok, ok. Let's pull the lower unit and see what we see. And therein lies the first problem. We tapped one of the rolled pins out of the connector on the shift linkage, and removed the four 1/2" nuts on the lower unit. Maybe they're 13mm based on what people say, but my 1/2" wrench fit it exactly perfectly nicely.

And nothing budged.

When I say nothing budged, I mean not one micron. We tried everything. We used blocks of wood on the plate, bashing the absolute hell out it until there was nothing left but splinters. We did the same after we soaked the threads and seam with both penetrating liquid, and even lubricant on the flange.

This was when we finally admitted defeat, and turned our attention to the Mercury. We angled the boat in the slip and hauled it off the mount, and up to the stand. I sprayed a little go juice in the carb and it started, ran a little puffy and sputtered here and there. So we pulled the carb, and disassembled it again. Now, a little PSA - Whenever you have tiny bits, PUT THEM SOMEWHERE SAFE! When we were trying to drop the lower unit on the Tohatsu, I used vice grips to pull the pin out of the linkage. I THOUGHT I had set the pin on the tarp we had under us, and then we shook that all over, and I went - oh no.. And then disassembling the carb, I dropped the tiny little bb that goes on the spring in the diaphram. And when I say dropped, I mean on the ground, in the grass. So while Dad went through more of the carb, I was laying on the grass combing through all the blades hoping for something good. Turns out, I found it. And then shortly after, realized the rolled pin for the Tohatsu was still clamped in the jaws of the vice grips. So, don't do what I did.

We found that the float looked like it might've been upside down, so we flipped that. That would totally be my bad, but to be fair, I didn't have a manual. There were a couple bolts that weren't fully tight (don't know how that happened), and the adjustment screw on the top of the carb seemed way out. I never touched it, since when the motor did run, it seemed to run fine. Just took forever to start, but then always seemed ok. Turns out, that was out of whack. We put the carb back on, and it pulled over nice and smooth and started right up. We put it back on the boat to test going into gear, and wouldn't you know it that that stupid motor ran perfect? The real test will be next weekend, when I go back up and it's sat for a week.

We buttoned up Saturday and called it a night after a spin around the bay under motor. Sunday, we decided to play with a light air sail that Dad had brought. We motored out into the lake, turned East and after some very light puffs, finally had enough wind to get moving. Didn't take too long to get to where I normally anchor, so I hauled the Rocna up through the forward hatch, clipped it onto new chain and rode that he brought up, and dropped it over the side. And I can safely say, it holds just fine. Almost lost a finger (not really) learning how hard it catches. We ate lunch on the hook, and then hauled anchor back up. I think I strained something in my right arm doing it, man that thing is a beast to haul straight up with your arms out to keep it from bashing the hull. But, it does the job for sure. We sailed all the way back, and even into the channel in the bay, then down to the South end of the bay and then tacked back up, under headsail alone. Was good wind, and good times.

At least the weekend ended on a positive note, right?