Build Blog, my Hobie TI (3) 2017 project

(When i viewed your first image, i thought will he putting rudders on the end of those akas.)

I like where you're going with this, looks great! and have thought many times of doing something similar to where your idea is heading.
And also cutting and melting ibc totes for a range of different applications... (just some more food for the creative's out there)

Looking forward to viewing more of your creative venue Husse

Ok, the inner mounting plates are ready and I have testmounted them. They seem to fit ok but the 50mm long stainless steel bolts I got are way to short. So tomorrow I have to make a new run into town.







The rest of the afternoon is booked for cleening up and organising the workshop. The place looks like a premordial warzone.


PS.
A small tip to try out if you are mounting rails or other stuff to your kayak using through bolts/inner plates. Its allways very hard to align and fit the first nuts on the bolts inside the hull. I used a long threaded rod and put the first nut in place with the inner mounting plate on the bottom of the kayak. Then I simply lifted the hole plate up whith the threaded rod and put in the other screws. Was very handy for this application any way.
DS.

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Sailing my TI and fishing.... thats bliss!!

Greetings!!
Rudders on the akas? Yes that should improve the sailing performance. Something to think about for a future build.
Thank for the positive feedback. My fishing mates has declared me insane..... I guess they are not totally wrong!

What do you mean by "melting ibc totes for a range of applications"? Lost you there mate?

All the best!
/Gustav

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Sailing my TI and fishing.... thats bliss!!

Hey Husse

Ibc, "intermediate bulk container", ex chemical tanks can be acquired for free sometimes, ex food tanks normally come at a cost. (the entire tank with frame in about 20kg) (i currently use them for aquaponics and water tanks).

But have recently thought, the plastic insert is "Pete" plastic (about 10kg), it can be cut and/or shaped, heat gun formed and used on my Ti.
For E.g... Quarter deck, haka, spray shirts ? (metal framing maybe required depending on the idea. but the ibc come with a galvanized frame too, so it's just a matter of cutting the plastic and/or metal the right way, and reinforcing etc)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNbljMY3p5A

"insanity is the definition of fun"

Ok yes interesting to think about using surplus plastic tanks for material. I think most of these ibc tanks are made of HDPE plastic (same as most kayaks). PETE is a bit harder mostly used for soda bottles etc.

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Sailing my TI and fishing.... thats bliss!!

First sollution for swinging motormount...

This morning I first started with temporarily (once more) mounting the rails and the aka crossbar. All seems to fit nicely and feels sturdy. I have ordered new stainless bolts and still have to remount the inner mounting plates with Sikaflex (hard silicon). I want to wait with the final installation untill all the mods in the rear are finished. (If I might have to make changes to the setup)
Motormount, foldable beachwheels and the rear riser/rodholders still have to be fabricated.

The last few days I have been trying to figure out a good way to combine the rear outboard motor and the foldable beech wheels. My best sollution so far is to make a sideways tilting motormount.
I took the plastic motorplate from the cheep trollingmount I bought from China and attached aluminium brackets that are placed over and under the outboard aluminium crossbar. To try it out I only drilled 4mm holes and put small screews in to make a sort of hinge. This enables the motorplate to swing or tilt outwards to get the outboard rig/prop out of the way for the wheels. Then I can fold the wheels down and swing back the outboard and secure it in the right position again.






It seems to work fine but my old 2-stroke only weighs 15kg (30Lb) and the 5Hp 4 stroke will be around 25kg (50Lb).
Tomorrow I will replace the temporary small 4mm screw with 12mm bolts and put som extra weight on the outboard. I hope this works so I can go on and start building the carriage for thefoldable beachwheels.






The height of the motormount is a bit higher than I wanted. Its about 25cm (10") above the gunwale so I am not sure if maybe I should choose a long rig outboard?
I hope I will be ready for a first testrun next week and will try the setup with my old 2-stroke on the new motormount and see how that works.

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Sailing my TI and fishing.... thats bliss!!

How good is messin about with boats?!?!
I've enjoyed reading your blog Husse, which is the most interesting for a while on the forum.
The water level roughly follows the mold seam on the hull so your OB may be OK. It is better to go higher rather than too low, that way you get shallow water capability. I can use my OB in water much shallower than what the rudder can take. The minimum height for prop/cooling intake is best so a long shaft OB would be a disadvantage.
From experience anything that hangs below the gunwale will get hit by waves, especially when heeled over. It is actually better to raise any OB mount above the gunwale. That lower angle bracket could be too low. You can get some idea of wave action in this slomo clip I posted here:
https://www.hobie.com/au/en/forums/view ... &start=165

Greetings! Thanks for the feedback. Sure do! I really like tinkering and just love taking the process from idea to an acceptable result.
The forum is great, lots of folks who seems to enjoy this aswell.

Yes I see your point with the splashing! Thanks for the vid, very good to see the waterline when motoring. Good work and nice quality!
I guess my bracket will hit the water surface and create some splashing. I will trim of the excess (about 1/2") of the bracket and then test how bad it gets. If it gets to messy I will just have to find another sollution. I am hoping the sturdy rail system I have mounted gives me the opportunity to make changes pretty easily if needed in the future.
All the best!
/Gustav

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Sailing my TI and fishing.... thats bliss!!

The last few days I abandoned the workshop and was just out fishing.
Lots of herring, cod and mackerel on the swedish south coast in Öresund. We saw dolphins (porpoises) and on the danish side some bloke even caught a swordfish!! The big schools of herring brings lot of predators along! Grate. We hope to see blue fin tuna and bonito arriving soon. Last year they arrived in small amounts in august! Maybe there will be more this year!?

Anyway, today I started with the build of the foldable wheelstand for the beachwheels.

Inside the 30x30mm tube there is 25x25 tubing to center/hold in place the 20mm the swingaxle. The axle glides in/out with a short pice of 25x25 tube that is fixed and lockes the wheelstand in the down position.





I spotwelded the pieces for the stand and welded on a temporary wheelaxel to enable to test out the setup with the big beachwheels mounted.





Nice to see the project developing with the wheels in place.





It works fine to fold the wheels up/down after the motor is swinged out. Also seems to work to rund the motor with the wheels in the down position. That might be useful when landning on a beach in ruff weather, just motoring in with the wheels down.





As for now the stand is a couple of inches to high. I will do some messuring to see how much I can shorten them. I figure the shorter they are the less force/load will be placed on the wheel crossbar mount.

Three problems that have to be adressed:1. As pointed out by Stringy the motormount crossbar is very low down and will hit tha waves making a lot of splashing. Also the amas toouch the mount especially when loading the kayak on the trailer. So they might get damaged if the get squashed againgst the underside of the motormount.
I will raise it about 2" and redo the motorplate and swing mechanism.



2. When the big wheels are lowered it will take a lot of force to press the down below the water.
I will have to make some sort of lever and maybe also a wiresystem to force them down into place.
I will make the lever removable and store it on the kayak in some good spot.

3. There is quite a lot of play in the wheel mechanism. I have to do spotwelds to tighten up the play and file them down a bit.

I am missing some platesteel, ordered it and getting it next week. The 6mm plate steel is for welded brackets for the crossbar. The brackets will be bolted with 6mm bolts to the aluminiumrail with 4 pcs of T-nuts on each side.
Will it hold? Will it be sturdy enough? I really dont know? I just have to test it. If it feels to flimsy I might have to put some bolts all the way trough the kayak. I hope to avoid this.
As for now it is grate that all the ad-ons (motormount, wheelstand) can be easily unmounted and modified if needed.

I will use the rest of the day to redesign the motormount but first I will have some nice lunch. Smoked mackelel from the the last days of fishing! Yummy!

/Gustav

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Sailing my TI and fishing.... thats bliss!!

Redesign of the motormount crossbar.

To solve problem no 1. (se previous post) I added a 50x50 mm aluminium beam under the crossbar. It will be bolted (or preferably welded) to the motormount crossbar. I made a new swing attachment to the motorplate with the brackets facing inwards instead of down. The motorplate has been shortened/cut in the lower end and I put in 3 new 8mm bolts and it all seems sturdy enough.
All theese "fixes" gives me a 10 cm (4") higher clearance from the waves then before and now also the amas can fold in under the motorplate with no problems. (I am a happy camper...? Sailor...? ANGLER!! Yeah thats the one!)





Thanks Stringy for the pointers!

Drawbacks....? Oh just another pound or so of metal... *sigh* ... metal doesnt float does it!?
I will drill out some holes of the aluminium in the motor crossbar. It is propably unnecessarily strong anyway so I can lighten the weight a little bit.

Tomorrow I will add the forward and backward facing torsion struts to enable the load of the 25 kg Mercury 5hp motor.
The last delivery of the marine grade SS bolts came today so I can now do the final mount of the aluminium rails whenever I am ready to.

The project sloooowly is getting along.
More to come... much more!

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Sailing my TI and fishing.... thats bliss!!

Some results from today of the fiddeling with the swing plate mechanism. The 12mm hingebolt is now mounted and I drilled out the crossbar to enable the motorplate fasteningnuts to pass through.
Tomorrow my new motor gets delivered and I can finally messure up the offset and drill the holes for the bolts on the motor crossbar. Then I can finally test mount the struts.
I have to decide how to best lock down the "swingplate" to the crossbar. I think I will fabricate a small stainless steel plate, weld on some nuts and have 8mm bolts through the crossbar. That might be a simple and managable solution.








I finaly picked up the stainless plate steel I ordered so tomorrow I can continue with the wheelstand. Lots to do.
Workshop tomorrow... Thursday is for fishing.... well every day is for fishing if I could have my say!

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Sailing my TI and fishing.... thats bliss!!

I like your solution for the swing up motor problem Gustav. Very elegant!
Your choice of motor at 25kg and 5hp is a lot more powerful and heavier than what most go for.
I'll be interested to see how it goes!!!

Yeah I am a little bit worried about weight and but more so about the forces from the lager motor. I am trying to make the motormount as solid and sturdy as possible. We will soon se if I suceeded. Tomorrow I will do the last of the motormount design adding the struts.

Personaly I had to loose some weight anyway so I figured if I diet and loose 20Lb I can buy a hevier more powerful engine. LOL! The net weight is the same!

With the weight of the 5Hp Mercury I will have about 200-250 Lb of equipment aboard (elecric motor, batteries and a lot of fishing gearaboard etc) plus myself in the TI so I think the extra horsepower and torque can be useful.
The weight will for sure not improve my TIs sailing performance but for me my TI is not primarily a sailcraft..... its just a really nice fishing platform (wichcraft?).
The sail (ecofriendly, quiet, cheep, durable and good for longer runs) is just a really nice bonus. So weight is not the biggest issue for me and I will propably be using the 5Hp just as much as the sail.

I have notice that the rear openings for the rudderline tubes are placed very low just above the waterline. I guess this can be a problem with some leakage??
Have you had any trouble with this?
I was thinking about filling the tubes with silicone greese. Maybe this could prevent water from getting in and at the same time reduces friction. Just a thought...
All the best!
/Gustav

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Sailing my TI and fishing.... thats bliss!!

Gustav, again - great reading all these posts.... most interesting for awhile now!!

I was wondering if you'd considered mounting the motor on the rear aka bar? I've seen it done very successfully and I was thinking of changing my design to match that? It also has it's drawbacks like not being able to easily collapse the aka but just wondered what your thoughts were?

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2015 Tandem Island - Golden Papaya "HALIBOO"
(retired) Outback - Hibiscus Red

Hi Haliboo!
Yes before I started my project I was looking at that sollution but it does not work very well for my application.
The position in the "middle" of the kayak makes it hard to control the motor and would call for some sort of remote control. (I am always in the rear seat) I guess steering in general also would be less effective when motoring in tight spots (harbour etc).
Also the motor would interfere with the placement of my sonar/fishfinder transducers (they will be mounted in middle). I guess downscan is ok but my sidescan/3D transducer would pick up the motor and all the bubbles making it hard to scan when using the motor.

But of course to mount the engine in the middle is an option that might work better if you have someone in the front seat or have less stuff on the kayak (I am a hopeless tech addict)
I am not sure I would dare to put to much stress on the aka cross bar. It is mounted with only two rather flimsy 1/4-20 (6mm) bolts on each side trough the plastic clip and the thin screws are only threded into the moulded in brass (nut in the kayak) for about 1/2" ( 12 mm). The aka crossbar mounts are allready pretty overloaded in my opinion and I am a bit suprised that Hobie did not opt for stronger bolts. In my opinion 3/8" (8mm) would be a lot safer. Still I have not heard or read about anyone that had the aka bolts or threading broken so I guess they can handle the stress ok from the amas under hard sailing. But adding the load of a,30Lb motor (or more) maybe might make them fail. The bolt are also rather long 2 1/4".
So if you mount the motor on the cross bar it is very important to add solid ample struts to handle all the torsion forces. Otherwise I think there might be a considerable risk of shearing the bolts in the aka mount when the are bent/vibrated back and forth for a long time.

If I was only using my TI for sailing (with much less stuff and weight on the kayak) and only wanted a small light motor (20 lb or so) to use sparsly (eg. when the wind dies off) I would still consider the "middleoption".
I have only seen one TI with the motor mounted on (or near) the rear aka. The US guy in the Hobie pro staff team (my feable mind has lost his name at the moment, sorry, but I will look it up later). Theres is a vid on Youtube displaying his setup but sadly no details of the motormount.
I have never seen his TI in action on the water with the motor running. Maybe you could contact him and get a review how the TI handles.

Just a few thoughts... I am a newbie TI owner so dont take my word for all of the above!

All the best!
/Gustav

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Sailing my TI and fishing.... thats bliss!!