Sunday, May 31, 2009

Trailers, outboards

I have started to do some research into trailers, mostly by looking at the EZ Loader and King Trailers websites. This morning my wife and I drove down to Boat Country, the local King Trailer dealer. After talking with the salesman and showing him a copy of sheet 61 that shows the trailer details, he suggested that the KB2800 model would work fine. He explained that the choice of trailer here is governed by the boat length, not weight, since my boat will be relatively light. This trailer only has two bunks, but sheet 61 seems to show four...? Or is it two for the main hull, and two small bunks to help support the (folded) floats?

Anyway, there were several KB2800's on the lot and I looked one over really well, as I have never towed anything in my life and the mechanical details of a trailer are new to me. It looked like a really nice trailer. The saleman quoted me a price of $2147 plus tax. Well, I wasn't about to buy one today, and I need to take a look at an EZ Loader trailer in order to compare, but at least I now have a # to start planning the budget with... Anyway if anyone knows of a better or cheaper direction to go on this, please feel free to offer advice (other than "build your own trailer").

Boat Country is also a Honda outboard dealer, which got me looking at the Honda 5hp model they had in the showroom. I had previously been considering a Tohatsu 6hp, but the Honda looked like a fine little motor. I think 5hp would be more than enough for an F22? Anyone disagree?

5 comments:

Simon said...

Could look at the suzuki 6hp four stroke.

http://www.suzukimarine.com/sr_09/df6-4-2.5/

Your probably right that 5 hp is enough but the suzuki is about 1.5 kg lighter and has an extra hp to boot which may be handy if trying to dock when the wind gets up especially with a wing mast. Also if you decide to put an alternator on the outboard the suzuki's is 6A versus 3A for the honda's alternator.

Jay said...

Thanks Simon, I will take a look at that.

Another thing to consider is that I am interested in the remote steering option as well. Honda seemed to offer quite a few accessories in this regard, but I'm getting the impression that remote steering for very small outboards is hard to find (not surprisingly). Remote steering would be very useful on the aft-cabin F22 model like mine though.

Jay

Ed said...

Remote steering would be nice, but something where one can attach a rod between the tiller and motor as others have done...

Personally, I'm more interested in remote throttle/shift and possibly remote tilt (adds a few pounds, I know, but might make it easier to raise/lower the motor depending on where we position it - still to be determined).

I think we're leaning more towards an 8-9.9hp motor in the event of winds/waves and such.

Jay said...

Let me clarify....I'm not 100% sure what I mean when I say "remote steering"..on a bigger boat, you get a steering wheel which controls the angle of the outboard obviously. On the F22, a steering wheel would be weird and out-of-place. Would the boat steer ok, if the motor always faced due aft and the only way to control direction was with the motor? Just wondering.

I hadn't thought about a link between the rudder and the motor before. If you have any pictures of what that looks like (esp when the motor is raised/tilted), I'd love to see them.

Also agree that remote throttle\shift\starting\tilt should come before steering...I love the look of the aft-cabin model, but don't fancy clambering over the top of it every time just to pull a starter cord.

Jay

Simon said...

The remote steer on a small motor is usually as simply as tieing a rope between the motor steering arm and your tiller and the putting a bit of plastic conduit pipe over the rope. Then cleat the rope somewhere on the tiller so that there is no slack in the rope and the motor and tiller point in the same direction. This way when you pull on the tiller you also pull on the motor and when you push the plastic conduit pushes the motor away.

As for the remote strat/throttle control I'm not sure if they do it for motors this small