Position for kicker on '74 Sterncraft I/O

[beericks]

I have a 1974 sterncraft that I just bought a kicker motor for it. It has a normal shaft and was wondering from looking at the pictures where I should put it. On the Port side there is a bracket for my future transducer. I was thinking above my trim piece because notice the curve in transom. I put the kicker up to the boat and I believe the cavitation plate will be below the water line with the auxilliary bracket all the way down. The kicker is only a 7.5 hp so it will never get this boat on plane and only used for emergency/trolling. I would have to fabricate a piece of wood to change the angle of the transom to 90 degrees. Any ideas?

 

[beericks]

Re: Position for kicker on '74 Sterncraft I/O

So I mounted my kicker on port side and the cavitation plate is below the water as long as the waves don't get too high....actually it saved me today when my main motor would not start (after tuning it yesterday but that is another story). So I am thinking of dropping the bracket even lower so that it will not rev higher with waves. Any ideas?

 

[ezmobee]

Re: Position for kicker on '74 Sterncraft I/O

Looks to me like you could (and should) drop it quite a bit.

 

[beericks]

Re: Position for kicker on '74 Sterncraft I/O

Yeah I was planning on dropping it more but it is going to be quite hard due to the curved part of my transom that is below the trim piece. I think that I am going to go to Lowes and buy a 4X6 treated piece of wood and custom carve something that will dip lower over the trim piece and sit up against the curved transom. The only problem is that when my transom goes to curve it becomes a double transom with extra fiberglass on the inside. So getting a bolt through will be very difficult and maybe even impossible(i am thinking thread-all). I was thinking of mounting the wood via through bolts and then attaching the bracket via lag screws. Would be a bad scenerio though if the bracket came off and I was in 50 foot of water.

 

[ezmobee]

Re: Position for kicker on '74 Sterncraft I/O

Yeah I'd ditch the lag idea. I'm sure you can get bolts of any length if you look hard enough (Fastenal, Grainger, etc).