Motor and Motor Bracket, Part 9, Installation of Motor Mount Pad and Motor

The motor mount pad and motor fully installed

Having installed the transom plate and backing plates, and having installed the motor bracket to these plates, it was now time for me to install the custom motor mount pad and the motor itself. The steps I took to accomplish this on Oystercatcher, my Ericson 25, are the subject of this posting.

Unlike the many other postings in this multi-part article, this one does not have has many step-by-step pictures. We will look instead at some pictures of the completed project, at least this first part of it. Below, we see the Yamaha 9.9 High Thrust motor mounted on the custom motor mount pad (painted white).

A beefy buddy of mine who lives nearby assisted me with the steps it took to get to this point. First, we bolted the custom motor mount pad into place. Then we picked up the motor and set it in place. We noticed right away that the clamps for the motor appeared as if they would obstruct the bolts that we planned to install - the bolts that would secure the motor to the pad. Therefore, we picked the motor back up off of the pad and set it back down onto the wooden motor rack (that I had wheeled-up next to the boat with a hand truck). Then, we grabbed a 1/2 inch piece of scrap Starboard. This HDPE black plastic board was just what we needed to raise the motor up high enough to give us some room for the bolts. If you look closely, you can see the piece of Starboard on top of the motor mount pad.

The bolt holes for the mounting of the motor to the pad did not pre-exist. We drilled them only after we had gotten the Starboard and the motor in place. At issue were the pre-existing holes in the Yamaha rack itself. These holes had to serve as a guide for the drilling of the holes through the pad. In other words, the motor had to be in place on the pad for us to carry out this drilling. If we had pre-drilled the holes in the pad, we would have had a very difficult time lining them up with the pre-existing holes in the Yamaha rack.

I was concerned that our free-handed drilling would result in holes that were not perfectly perpendicular to the pad. My buddy, however, who's quite the craftsman and quite the mariner, assured me that marking the pad and then taking the pad to his drill press was unnecessary. He was right.

He also assured me that the starboard would not present any problems with regard to the security of the motor on the motor mount pad.

He also helped me, at this time, install the rudder. I discuss the repair and reinstallation of this rudder in a series of separate postings.

With the motor finally in place, I was pleased to see that I would definitely be able to drop the prop of the motor deep into the water, if I so wished. In the picture below, as in the previous six, you see the motor bracket in its fully-deployed state. Pay no attention to the tilt of the motor. Once I had this motor connected to the battery bank, I would tilt it into a more vertical position so that the prop would be horizontal with regard to its direction of thrust.

With the first major task out of the way, I could now focus on the joining of the positive and negative wires of the motor to the battery bank. I began by drilling a hole into the side of the cockpit locker on the port side. As you see in the picture below, I used a Lennox brand hole saw to do this. This task would have been impossible if I had not earlier installed the nearby circular hatch. This area of the port side cockpit locker is very difficult to access. I found it impossible to join the three bilge pump hoses to the through-hulls in the transom without installing this circular hatch.

In this hole I installed a nylon through-hull, one that the previous owner used to have in the starboard cockpit locker. He used this through-hull for routing the fuel line from his motor to the fuel tank that he (foolishly) stored in the cockpit locker. Yes, it was a cheap, nylon through-hull, but it didn't matter, since it wouldn't be situated below the waterline. Nevertheless, I used butyl tape to seal this fitting in the hole. This would prevent water from leaking around the edges of the fitting. I sawed off most of the through-hull to make it easier to route the wires at a right angle after they entered the cockpit locker.

After I routed the wires into the through-hull, I shoved butyl tape into the spaces around the wires. I didn't want a single drop of water to enter this cockpit locker, especially since much of my main AC and DC circuit was in this locker.

The terminals that came with these wires, in my opinion, were not up to snuff. They were poorly crimped, and they were not sealed with heat-shrink tubing. Therefore, I cut off these terminals and installed my own.

I address my work on this starting circuit much more thoroughly in my series of articles on the electrical system that I installed in my complete rewiring of the boat.

I made sure to keep plenty of slack in these wires from the motor. I also made sure to put in a drip loop so that the water would have less of a propensity to creep toward the through-hull.

Here's one shot of the cockpit locker with part of the starting circuit. In the foreground the positive (red) wire from the motor terminates at an ANL fuse block. On the other side of the fuse block a cable leads aft and ultimately downward to that portion of the main circuit on the bulkhead in the lazarette.

With the starting wires now joined to the battery bank I could now use the power tilt/trim, and I could crank the motor whenever I needed to run fresh gas through it.

For a long time - before I ever installed the motor on the bracket - I used to have to perform this monthly cranking ritual by temporarily joining the motor's wires to one of the starting batteries in one of my vehicles. It was sort of a pain. I'd use a hand truck to roll the motor (on a wooden motor rack) up close the the vehicle. Then I'd use jumper cables to make the connection. Water would puddle up in the yard and make a lot of mud.

In this new set-up, the water puddled up behind the boat and made a lot of mud, but I didn't have to worry about this for very long. This was the one and only time I had to crank the motor up like this. Shortly afterward I launched the boat, a joyous moment after a lengthy refitting.

One last thing I did before this launch was to fabricate a modified tiller for the motor. I made it out of 1/2 inch Starboard. The real Yamaha tiller worked well in some positions in the transom cutout, but not in others. I wanted to have a short tiller that would give me full range of movement when necessary.

There were two holes in a metal bar on the forward side of the motor. I believe that these served as anchor points for the steering system for Yamaha owners who opted for steering cables in lieu of a tiller. At any rate, I used these holes to anchor my modified tiller.

You can see clearly in the picture below that the modified tiller is one that provides full range of movement. The Yamaha tiller, on the other hand, due to its port side orientation does not allow for port side movement within the cutout in the Ericson 25 transom.

With the Yamaha tiller in the vertical position, the modified tiller provides full range of movement. I can say now that after the launch, and after my repeated use of the motor for leaving the dock, returning to the dock, and simply motoring in general, I almost always keep the Yamaha tiller in the vertical position. That way, it's always out of the way and does not present any restrictions in terms of the range of movement of the motor. It took a while, but I have become quite accustomed to operating the throttle (black handle at the end of the tiller) and the gear shifter (gray lever in the middle of the tiller) with the tiller in the vertical position. I should add that I have never had any problems in terms of the prop of the motor interfering with the boat's rudder. The Garelick heavy duty bracket was just what I needed for this boat. Additionally, I should say that I almost always operate the motor with the bracket in the lowest position. I can operate the motor with the bracket in the mid-level position, but I prefer to have it deeper to prevent hobby-horsing in the tides, winds, and currents where I live. The mid-level position would probably work well on the relatively calm waters of a modestly sized lake.

All in all, I'm glad that I spent the time and the money to make all these modifications to this boat. She's now much more dependable than she was when I bought her. I never have to worry about muscling upstream through an outgoing five knot tide in Charleston Harbor. This motor in this set-up has what it takes to get me where I want to go.

This ends this article on the many steps I took in the repowering of Oystercatcher, my Ericson 25.

Motor and Motor Bracket, Part 3, Transom Plate, Construction

The motor bracket and transom plate, dry-fitted

Having purchased a Garelick heavy duty motor bracket, and having determined where I should mount it on the transom, my next task was to construct a transom plate. This piece of aluminum would not only provide the additional space needed for the installation of the bracket in the area of the existing cutout, but also it would provide additional strength to the transom itself. This bracket and the Yamaha 9.9 High Thrust motor that I would mount on it were quite heavy. In 1975 when this boat was constructed, relatively lightweight two-stroke motors were the norm. Now that this beefy four-stroke would hang from this transom, this plate would make amends for a transom that had not been designed with this type of motor in mind. How I constructed this transom plate for Oystercatcher, my Ericson 25, is the subject of this posting.

I began by ordering some sheets of aluminum from onlinemetals.com. I ordered two different sheets of .19 inch, i.e., 3/16 inch 6061 T6 aluminum. The first sheet was 24 inches x 24 inches. The other was 12 inches by 48 inches. The first would be for the transom plate. The second would be for the backing plate that I would install on the cockpit side of the transom. That is the subject of my next posting. I purchased 3/16 inch aluminum on the advice of a friend who specializes in marine aluminum work. This was the same friend who had advised me to reinforce the transom.

The first thing I did after I received the aluminum and set up my cut station next to the boat was to remove the protective film from the large sheet - the one that I would use to make the transom plate.

In terms of the materials that I assembled for this job, aside from the aluminum, one item was Tapfree, a cutting oil that I would use for each cut with the saw and each hole that I would drill.

I also got some Bosch brand T101A3 blades for my jigsaw. These were labeled as Plexiglass blades, but they were also suitable for cutting aluminum.

My first cut reduced the large sheet to the appropriate width.

As I made the cut, a friend gradually applied oil to the cut-line in front of the blade.

After I cleaned off the oil and aluminum sawdust, I clamped the piece to the transom.

This enabled me to scribe an arc that corresponded to the curvature of the hull.

I made sure that the arc was slightly recessed relative to the edge of the hull and transom. I of course did not want the edge of the aluminum to project beyond this edge of the boat.

Now it was time to make this long, graceful cut.

In order to ensure that the cut was as clean as possible, I made it without pausing for a rest. In front the blade once again a friend applied the oil as I moved along the line.

Not bad for free-handed work. Teamwork makes the dream work, as they say.

Believe it or not, almost a full year had passed since I had purchased that Yamaha motor during that annual camping trip with my buddies to Edisto Island. That's how busy I was with all the other projects involved with the refitting of Oystercatcher. This year, instead of camping at Edisto, my buddies and I decided to hang out at my house and work on the boat. This meant that we'd still do a lot of outdoor cooking, just like we would have done on Edisto. During the middle of the day, we fired up the burner and boiled some peanuts for a snack. We'd bought these green peanuts at a local Piggly Wiggly grocery store. For those unfamiliar with this fall and winter ritual in the American South, you boil green peanuts, i.e., fresh unroasted peanuts, in heavily salted water. After a few hours, the peanuts become soft, and the shells become mushy. When the time comes to eat them, you tear one half of the shell off and eat the peanuts out of the other half of the shell. To those who've never had boiled peanuts, this always sounds disgusting, but believe me, this warm, salty goodness is something that many people love, if they ever get a chance to try it.

One of the others things that my friends and I did on this day was to remove the rudder from the transom. This was definitely not something that I could have done by myself, and it was essential that we remove this to accomplish the necessary work on the transom plate.

Now that we had cut the piece of aluminum into its proper shape, we needed to drill the appropriate holes in the transom. The holes would then allow us to work backward, so to speak. The holes in the transom would serve as guides for the holes we would drill in the aluminum plate. More on this later.

We began by drilling the holes for the motor bracket. Only afterwards would we figure out where to drill the holes for the securing of the perimeter of the aluminum plate to the transom.

The bracket fit just right in the allowable space.

Notice how the bottom right corner of the bracket is flush with the edge of the transom. Also notice how the top of the bracket extends above the cutout. As I said, this was one reason why I needed this aluminum plate. Finally, notice how the bracket is offset relative to the center of the cutout. As I mentioned in my previous posting, I had determined that this was necessary in order to compensate for the offset tiller on the Yamaha motor.

One of the complaints that online reviewers had of the Garelick heavy duty bracket was that it was difficult or impossible to operate the swing lever mechanism. These complaints usually came from sailboat owners who did not have cutouts in their transoms. The picture below illustrates well how it would indeed be difficult to operate this swing lever mechanism without a cutout. I should note to Ericson 25 owners that despite this, it is still possible to insert a panel into the cutout after you have deployed or retracted the motor. When you have deployed the motor, the swing lever mechanism is out of the way, and when you have retracted the motor, it is possible to put the swing lever mechanism in a position more vertical than the one depicted here.

As we drilled the holes through the transom, we made sure that they cleared all obstructions, both in the cockpit and down below in the lazarette.

You'll recall that it was necessary for us to take into account the sole of the cockpit. Some of the bolt holes were above the sole, others below it.

After we had drilled the holes for the motor bracket, we marked and drilled the holes for the perimeter of the aluminum plate.

This took a lot of time and effort. Once again we had to take into account the cockpit sole. We also had to take into account other issues in the cockpit. Notice the circular hatch to the right of the cutout. I had earlier installed this hatch so as to take advantage of the wasted space in this area of the boat. It was here that I planned to stow docklines. Without the access to this space that this circular hatch provided, I would never have been able to install the hardware for the outer edge of the aluminum plate.

After we had drilled all the necessary holes in the transom, we clamped the aluminum plate to the transom and marked all of the holes. This required me to climb into the cockpit and mark the aluminum by sticking a pencil through all of the holes. I also had to climb into the lazarette and mark all of the holes in that area in a similar way.

Back at the cut table, we began the tedious process of drilling all of the holes.

One of us would drill, while the other would apply the oil to the drill bit. Ideally, we would have used a drill press for this, but with team work we were able to drill holes that were, for the most part, true. Two of us would stand at right angles to the driller to make sure that he was holding the drill bit as vertically as possible. We had used the same technique when we drilled the holes in the transom.

After we had drilled all the holes, we clamped the plate to the transom. It was at this time that we made fine adjustments, inserting screws into each hole, making sure that everything lined up perfectly. If a hole happened to be slightly off, we would insert the drill bit and widen it slightly.

Satisfied, we now began the task of countersinking each of the holes around the perimeter. This would allow the flathead screws to sit flush with the surface of the aluminum plate. Before we started the countersinking process, we practiced on one of the scrap pieces of aluminum.

Just as we had done when we had drilled the holes, when we countersunk them, one of us operated the drill while one of us oiled the bit.

After we had countersunk each of the holes around the perimeter, we did another dry-fit of the plate to the transom to make sure, once again, that everything was lining up just right.

We then dry-fit the bracket to the plate. This again required some additional drilling here and there to make sure that everything lined up perfectly.

Satisfied with our labor, we took a few pictures of our work before cracking open a few cans and firing up the smoker.

This ends this posting of how I, with a little help from my friends, constructed the aluminum transom plate for Oystercatcher, my Ericson 25.