Minn Kota S/S 3hp - Hacking/Adding Reverse

[mrshake]

Hello Iboaters,
I'm hoping the collective knowledge will lead me to wither or not this is even feasable.

I've got a 20ft pontoon we use primarily on our little subdivision lake (85 acres of water) that doesn't allow gas engines. The pontoon came with an OLD Minn Kota S/S 3hp foot controlled tolling motor. However, the steering on the foot control does not work.

Someone had pulled the power module off anyway and put a transom mount bracket on it, so we have it mounted to the pontoon transom, and have rigged basic steering using the still-attached outboard steering cable (it has no outboard on it at all right now). This is working fine, and we tool around the lake with no issue. However, the lack of Reverse on this motor makes things difficult at the ramp.

Does anyone have any idea if its possible to hack in reverse on this old motor? I was thinking about taking the head off the shaft and wiring up my own basic controller with on/off/reverse/speed control and run wires up to the console. But I don't want to kill the 12v motor by switching polarity or whatever.

Thoughts?

 

[glenn property of pam]

The old type were nothing more than a dc motor with different winding configurations which controlled the speed. Now in theory you could reverse the polarity and the motor would run backwards as long as there was no diode in the wiring stopping you from doing it. I have a old evinrude trolling motor modified to fit a outboard bracket on a 8' boat and that's wired using relays so I have forwards and reverse (one speed only). No guarantees that your motor can do this so you have to decide if its worth risking burning the motor up to find out.

 

[NYBo]

The motor shouldn't care a bit if you reverse polarity to run it in reverse. See for yourself by switching the power leads and running it. The harder part will be switching polarity with relays capable of handling the current draw. Starter relays should work nicely.

 

[mrshake]

I'm not to worried about relays and such... that I can handle. The thing that worries me is that if I switch the leads at the battery.. the motor does NOT run.