870 Expressmag
Petty Officer 2nd Class
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2011
- Messages
- 154
If this is in the wrong area of the forum I apologize. First off let me say I am 30yrs old and had boats in the family my whole life, however this is the first time for me to own one. I grew up with my grandpas 16ft Lowe aluminum and his 20ft Sea-Ray. Well since his passing dad got the Sea-Ray and my uncle got the Lowe which i no longer have access too, we use the Sea-Ray for Lake Erie a lot but it's harder to fish smaller lakes with it. So I wanted a smaller boat. I got a great deal from my uncles friend on a 15ft Meyers aluminum with trailer and 18hp Evinrude Fastwin. Came with fuel tanks, anchores, lines, oars, etc. I dont know the model of it as I cant find a placard plate anywhere. I do know that it used to be steering wheel drive and that was all removed and now it's tiller steer. After cleaning the carb, replacing lower drive lube, and putting new rope in just for security(its elec start), we took it out and she runs like a top! Anyways heres the questions. When pulling the boat down the road the motor seems awfully close to the ground. Theres no lock or anything to keep the motor tilted up that we can find and it doesn;t appear to have ever had anything. So are we missing something? or should we jack to boat up and move the trailer pads upward since it seems we have lots of room in the slots where they are bolted to trailer?(See picture) Also if we move the rear up do we have to maintain at least some upward slope from rear to front? otherwise the boat would be hard to load and unload if it were doing a nosedive on trailer. Also when trailering down road I noticed that the motor swings back and forth, once again cant find a lock, so we used a strap temporarily but it shouldn;t do that should it? And I guess last but not least, I noticed when we fished the other night with it that the entire boat stayed bone dry except a little bit in very front, at first i thought maybe splashing over front when dad first sat in front seat, or water from anchor, but now I wonder if I have a small seep because i noticed on the bow eye it looks like someone has placed a little sealant once before, and it has a very slight amount of wiggle to it. Is this something I should worry about or am I just being overly anal? Thanks for any info and help guys.
