1997 Mirrocraft 18' aluminum fish n ski

[redneck joe]

One of my fake grandkids bought is first boat, then I helped him find a motor. 90 mariner, 88 I think. He mounted yesterday and floated it. He's stoked. Needs steering and cables, control box appears to be ok.

 

[BWR1953]

One of my fake grandkids bought is first boat, then I helped him find a motor. 90 mariner, 88 I think. He mounted yesterday and floated it. He's stoked. Needs steering and cables, control box appears to be ok.

Cool!

I still need to adjust the jack plate height in addition to getting a new starter. Plus, the PO told me that the rectifiers are bad, so I'll need to replace those as well. I may take the boat onto the water before replacing the rectifiers. Maybe.

 

[redneck joe]

Are rectifiers what I call the sparky box?

 

[mattsteg]

Ground clearance will be "interesting" once the engine is fully set up.
The jack plate is way high for now, but will be lowered quite a bit for operational service. I'll have to be very careful to make sure that the engine is tilted fully up for travel and to not lower it until it's actually in the water at the ramp.

That's just the natural way of things I think. As long as you can finagle a way to get it down enough to run on muffs for maintenance and don't run around at launches or something, that's just the cost of your boat riding low enough to hopefully see over/around it, get it through a garage door, and get in and out ok.

Or it still fills up your rear view, is a big climb in, and will only make it through a normal garage door with the tongue on the ground like my V5.

 

[BWR1953]

Are rectifiers what I call the sparky box?

The rectifier converts the AC produced by the engine and changes it to DC (theoretically) to charge the battery and also provides pulses for the tachometer. On this engine, the OEM units are very expensive, so I'll be checking into aftermarket products which are still pretty pricey.

 

[BWR1953]

I just picked up the boat from my buddy's house and it's back home safe!

In addition to the new starter, I'll also need to get the trolling motor installed before I'm willing to take the boat out on the water.

 

[BWR1953]

The new trailer winch stand looks good. Now I have to get it painted up.

One thing I have to figure out is how to adjust the jack plate down. I can't tilt the engine down fully to do the job, because the engine is too low.

 

[BWR1953]

Got some paint slapped on the new winch stand this morning. It's not pretty, but it's protected!

It was like a million degrees out there but only about 500,000% humidity.

 

[BWR1953]

For adjusting the jack plate, I think I'll try lowering the front of the trailer right down to the floor, which might get the stern up high enough for me to lower the jack plate enough to be at a starting operational point.

 

[redneck joe]

I've not been feeling any difference when I jump in the pool....

 

[BWR1953]

Been a tough week, but I got back to work this morning.

I took some measurements for adjusting the jack plate. It looks like it's way too high for starters.

 

[BWR1953]

Sorry, guys. There's an intermittent site problem which prevents us from uploading pix. I'll keep trying, but in the meantime, I'll just say what I did this morning.

I got first measurements of the engine and boat heights above the concrete floor, so that I can set the jack plate to a beginning setup position. Since then, I've been reading a lot about how to go about positioning the jack plate for a boat with no pad. Right now, it's way high.

It's definitely a complicated procedure. I'm learning.

My wife helped me get the trolling motor up onto the boat (the boy is out of the nest! Yay! ) so that I could do some position testing with that as well. After messing with it a bit, I picked a spot and will get it mounted later. That's also a 2-person job, but my wife should be fine for that.

I'll get the pix uploaded once the site system issue is fixed.

It being summertime in Florida, I'm limited to a max of about 2 hours out in the garage each morning before the heat/humidity drives me back into the house.

I'm too old for this stuff.

 

[BWR1953]

This morning my wife and I got the jack plate lowered as far as it will go, but that still makes the AV plate 2" above the bottom of the hull. That may or may not be a good starting point, so I'll have to start a research thread about it.

I sure wish I could upload some pix.

 

[BWR1953]

Been awhile again. Progress has been made, albeit in my usual slow fashion.

Jack plates were deleted and sold. The engine is properly mounted and the hydraulic system is set up and working.

I'd hoped to splash this weekend, but I want to have the trolling motor fully operational before launching the boat. Running into a couple issues there, but I've ordered some parts which should be here this week.

My wife and I worked on the TM installation yesterday. We each only got a little hurt.

It's not done installing because we're waiting on parts. Maybe this week we'll get more done.

 

[redneck joe]

What is tm

 

[BWR1953]

What is tm

Trolling Motor

 

[redneck joe]

Dam kids and yalls abbreviations cant keep up....

 

[BWR1953]

Pix are working again. Time for a major update.
I'll add the pix by date taken.

In spite of the absolutely oppressive heat plus humidity and my limited mobility, progress did continue during the photo fiasco. Slow, but steady. Typical for me.

Preface: "the boy" is gone. Moved out and off to college/work. So, when I say "we" going forward, I mean myself and my lovely bride.

27 Jul 24
We'd completed the jack plate installation and checked the AV plate height above the bottom of the hull. It was way high. Like 5 inches.










Next, we started testing layout of where I wanted to place the trolling motor.

 

[BWR1953]

28 Jul 24

We dropped the engine down as low as it could go in the jack plates and it was still too high above the AV plate. It needed to be removed.

 

[BWR1953]

12 Aug 24

In spite of our best efforts over a couple of days, we weren't able to remove the jack plate ourselves. So, I took the boat over to my friend's house and made short work of the task.





Close enough!


The PO told me that the tach never worked on the XR6 and that it wouldn't charge. I figured that it needed new rectifiers.

Boy, was I right! They were toast!