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PostPosted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 8:50 pm 
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Did about 30 plus miles this day with these two motors ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXdrOLMETm4



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PostPosted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 9:26 pm 
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Tech wrote:
Well done on this. It's the best review by far on the power to push the AI/TI.

I am a little surprised that your 3.5HP can push only 6mph. I imagine it should be in the 7-9mph range.
My AI+Suzuki 2.5 can go 6knots (6.9mph) on half throttle.

I think you may be confusing that speed range with the 403. The review says my 3.5HP gas motor will hit 7MPH at only half throttle. At 3/4 throttle I hit 7.5 to 8MPH but can't go much faster at full throttle because I hit the rev limiter. I think I need to re-prop to reach max speed.


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 9:42 pm 
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stringy wrote:
Well done Pro10s! 8)
Your original Torqeedo review set the bar but you've raised it here. Best review I think I've ever read, with well balanced results.
Congrats as well on your mount. Looks solid and is simple and clean looking without any bracing.

Re cost- downunder with our exchange rate the AUD$ cost difference is even greater:
Suzuki DF2.5=$1150
UL@$2750 + spare 915wh@$1430 =$4180. Add the 45Wsolar panel@$1650 =$5830!!!


PS- With your mount could you get away with shortening the "base bar" bottom tube to just two 50mm base bar spacers at the hull attachment points? That would lighten the mount and give you more room in the cargo well. I did that with my mount and it has been problem free. The tube I used had a much thinner wall thickness and I needed to add bracing and vertical reinforcing, but your thick walled tube should handle it fine.

Wow, $2750 AUD for a 403, that's about $2165 USD. I think Australia must be one of the best places in the world to live, but you guys sure pay a lot for some things. I don't fully understand why.

Yes, two 50mm spacers, one on each side, might work. I would need to test the strength and stability, but you say you've already successfully done it. Good exchange of ideas. Saving cargo room is always helpful.


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 08, 2017 9:53 pm 
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Living Waters wrote:
Did about 30 plus miles this day with these two motors ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXdrOLMETm4

Great video and an excellent fishing rig. Incredible.

Have you been happy with the performance of your Tohatsu? Have you had any fuel system issues?


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PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2017 10:59 am 
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Crossposted from the Haka thread. The motor was $89, battery was $49. It's no Torqeedo but good for 5 miles at least.

https://www.hobie.com/forums/viewtopic. ... 60#p292720


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 13, 2017 6:29 pm 
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WOW! Fantastic post and just what I was looking for. I picked up a TI at the beginning of the summer and have been loving it. I've been contemplating getting an outboard for it, but all the mounts I've seen look too Rube Goldberg for me. I was thinking over the winter, I'd work on a better design, but what you've come up with is perfect, exactly what I going after. Clean and easy to remove. We mostly sail on a local lake where no gas motors are allowed, so the motor won't see a lot of use. I didn't want crazy modifications that constantly got in the way when not needed. Your design is near perfection!

How has the mount held up over the season?

Thanks again for the post, incredibly useful!


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 13, 2017 8:04 pm 
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atv223 wrote:
WOW! Fantastic post and just what I was looking for. I picked up a TI at the beginning of the summer and have been loving it. I've been contemplating getting an outboard for it, but all the mounts I've seen look too Rube Goldberg for me. I was thinking over the winter, I'd work on a better design, but what you've come up with is perfect, exactly what I going after. Clean and easy to remove. We mostly sail on a local lake where no gas motors are allowed, so the motor won't see a lot of use. I didn't want crazy modifications that constantly got in the way when not needed. Your design is near perfection!

How has the mount held up over the season?

Thanks again for the post, incredibly useful!

Thank you very much for your kind words.

The mount has held up to all the torture testing I've been able to throw at it thus far. This includes very rough seas, high winds, as much power as the 3.5HP motor can deliver, the extra weight of my Tohatsu motor over the Honda and Suzuki, and all the test overloads I've applied to it. One of the most difficult tests for any mount is holding up to trailering the boat with the motor mounted. When trailered, the mount is subject to even more stress than on the water because it must hold up to harsh road conditions such as large bumps at high speeds, quick starts and stops, and the twists and turns of roadways. I worry more about the mount and hull integrity when trailering than I do on the water. So far no issues. If I ever do see an issue I will report it here right away. If you do trailer the boat with the motor mounted, ensure the hull is adequately and correctly supported under the motor. You don't want the hull unduly flexing under the weight of the motor without proper support. And when not using the boat during on-season storage, take the motor's weight off of the hull by propping up the motor underneath. Off-season, remove the motor entirely.

I do recommend buying as lightweight a motor as possible, such as the Suzuki 2.5HP. The weight of any gasoline motor using any mount will offset the boat's side to side weight distribution. This puts additional stresses on the hull and causes the boat to list slightly to the side on which the motor hangs. This is not a major issue but you will notice it. In high winds this tends to submerge the starboard ama a bit sooner that it would have with no motor. Again, this is not a big problem but you do have to factor for it, just as if you would have to factor for the weight of a passenger riding on one of the tramps.

If you want the least possible impact to the boat, and don't mind the extra cost, consider the Torqeedo 403. You can probably also use this motor on lakes that prohibit gasoline motors, like the one you mentioned.


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 18, 2017 8:51 am 
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Update on my Tohatsu 3.5HP

In this review I mentioned that I chose a Tohatsu 3.5 HP outboard to power my TI. I liked the fact that it provided an extra horsepower for about the same size engine as a 2.5 HP. Additionally, it produced the most thrust in comparison tests. It did a great job providing more than enough power for the TI, it would hit the rev limiter at about 3/4 throttle so its full potential was never realized without a higher pitch prop (which I could not find for this motor).

While it had excellent power, it unfortunately severely lacked in reliability. It would sometimes run fine for hours but other times it would stall continuously. I first contributed this to a fuel issue, thinking that there was a problem with the gasoline I was using even though I had carefully selected and checked it. So I then found a top tier gas station that offered non-ethenol. I then further filtered the gas using a water and contaminate separating filter, and then added both Starbrite gas stabilizer and Seafoam to it. Yet no change, the motor would run fine at times and then continuously stall leaving me stranded. Good thing I had the 403.

I began to notice the motor would have trouble primarily on days where the waves were choppy. It also would stall when executing a sharp turn. Both of these conditions had one thing in common, they would splash a lot of water under the motor's cowl. Now you would think that a marine motor would be waterproof, or at least highly water resistant. Not so the Tohatsu. There is a large opening on the bottom of the cowl where the oil plug protrudes. Just above this large opening is, believe it or not, the air intake for the carburetor. So when water would splash onto the bottom of the cowl and into the oil plug opening, it would then be sucked into the carburetor's air intake which then quite effectively stalled the motor or caused it to sputter to an eventual stall. Once water entered the fuel system, it would be very difficult to clear it out and the motor would not run well for quite some time afterward.

This motor, and its Mercury clone, have a history of stalling issues as you can see here if you read the large number of negative reviews. This, I speculate, may primarily be caused by water splashing under the cowl, although many owners don't seem to realize that could be the real issue, so they focus on fuel and carb issues. This problem is exacerbated on the TI because our motors are mounted on the side of the boat rather than being typically mounted onto a rear transom which provides a better degree of protection against splashing. On the TI, the side mounted motor is exposed to splashing from wave action. Additionally, the rooster tail of water from the prop splashes water onto the side and back of the TI causing even more water exposure to the motor.

I tried covering the hole for the oil plug with Gorilla tape. This made a dramatic difference. I could now execute sharp turns without the motor stalling. However, it would still stall on choppy seas. This is because there is another huge opening where the throttle lever protrudes. Unlike the oil plug opening, this was almost impossible to tape up because the throttle lever needs to rotate up and down and it's right near the very hot exhaust pipe. Yet I tried and it further helped with the stalling, but in the end it proved all but impossible to stop the water from getting in when the splashing was extreme. Enough was enough, I couldn't cure a bad design with a roll of Gorilla tape or any other such first aid. This motor was simply ill equipped to work on a TI. It might be fine for a little boat tender where the user just travelled a few hundred feet to get to his moored sailboat, but it was simply not designed well enough for the all day rigours of operating for hours on the side of a TI in all kinds of seas.

So I'm removing the motor from my TI and returning it to the dealer who thankfully said they would offer a full refund after I explained the problem. At least the motor dealer was superb in this matter.

For use on a TI, I do not recommend the Tohatsu 3.5 HP motor, and by extension its 2.5 HP brother (same design), nor do I recommend the Mercury, Mariner, and Nissan clones of this motor.

So my TI is now once again without a gasoline powered motor, but I'm getting along perfectly fine with just the Torqeedo. The only thing I do miss is the extra speed because I like to travel very far distances and get there more quickly due to the fact that I travel on a very large body of water and far away sights are tempting. So I have not yet given up, I will be looking into purchasing the Suzuki 2.5 HP. The only problem is that there are no Suzuki outboard motor dealerships anywhere near me. If I run into similar or other issues with the Suzuki, I want to have some recourse, which makes purchasing from an online dealer a bit daunting. I'm wondering how Suzuki or other outboard models prevent water from entering into their cowls.

The use of these small outboard motors, designed mostly for light duty boat tender use, presents an extreme duty usage on the TI where it must be impervious to severe splashing in all kinds of conditions, and able to run at high rpms for hours on end. Few of these motors will have the "right stuff". The Tohatsu certainly did not.


Last edited by pro10is on Mon Jun 08, 2020 6:27 am, edited 5 times in total.

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PostPosted: Fri Aug 18, 2017 10:06 am 
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Thanks. All more the reason to stick with the 403. I just ordered one, now on to developing a drivewell mount!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 18, 2017 10:52 am 
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pro10is, I have used the Suzuki 2.5 on very choppy sea, big swell day, never got stalled midway for about 1 year now.
I am happy with it. The air intake is inside the cowling. Go for it.

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PostPosted: Fri Aug 18, 2017 11:13 am 
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Tech wrote:
pro10is, I have used the Suzuki 2.5 on very choppy sea, big swell day, never got stalled midway for about 1 year now.
I am happy with it. The air intake is inside the cowling. Go for it.

Tech,
The air intake for the Tohatsu was inside the cowl as well. Does the Suzuki cowl have any large openings on or near the bottom? You say you don't have any issues with undue stalling and the motor has been reliable for you? Any other issues?

Thanks, I'm looking for as much input on this motor as possible before I buy it without a local dealer.


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 18, 2017 12:14 pm 
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pro10is wrote:
Tech wrote:
pro10is, I have used the Suzuki 2.5 on very choppy sea, big swell day, never got stalled midway for about 1 year now.
I am happy with it. The air intake is inside the cowling. Go for it.

Tech,
The air intake for the Tohatsu was inside the cowl as well. Does the Suzuki cowl have any large openings on or near the bottom? You say you don't have any issues with undue stalling and the motor has been reliable for you? Any other issues?

Thanks, I'm looking for as much input on this motor as possible before I buy it without a local dealer.


No big hole or anything under.
It has one issue where it is tuned too lean from the factory to get the 4* CA emission.
I turned the fuel adjustment screw 1/4 turn, it runs perfectly.

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PostPosted: Fri Aug 18, 2017 1:38 pm 
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Tech wrote:
No big hole or anything under.
It has one issue where it is tuned too lean from the factory to get the 4* CA emission.
I turned the fuel adjustment screw 1/4 turn, it runs perfectly.

That's very interesting. On the Tohatsu the fuel adjustment screw was not adjustable, the only user adjustment was the idle screw. Did you have to drill out a sealed cap to get to the fuel adjustment screw or was it readily adjustable?


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 18, 2017 3:42 pm 
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I can vouch for the Suzuki DF2.5's waterproofness.
On an early test trip with the mount in its original lower position, we had to motor directly into a 20 knot wind, on open waters for over an hour. The motor (and me) got absolutely drenched from the wind waves hitting the mount and splashing everywhere. I was a bit concerned that the mount would take the pounding but it handled it fine. The motor didn't miss a beat and the only time it has stopped on water is when it has run out of fuel. After refuelling it has always started within 1-3 pulls.
Once, launching at an unfamiliar boat ramp, I slipped carrying the motor and briefly submerged it. I removed the cowl and shook the motor to get rid of the water. There is a foam filter in the air intake and I could see it was a bit wet, but I couldn't easily remove it. I dried what I could with a small towel. After a couple of pulls it spluttered to life and ran a bit rough for a short time but then ran normally the rest of the day. That was 40 faultless engine hours ago!


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 18, 2017 9:48 pm 
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stringy wrote:
I can vouch for the Suzuki DF2.5's waterproofness.
On an early test trip with the mount in its original lower position, we had to motor directly into a 20 knot wind, on open waters for over an hour. The motor (and me) got absolutely drenched from the wind waves hitting the mount and splashing everywhere. I was a bit concerned that the mount would take the pounding but it handled it fine. The motor didn't miss a beat and the only time it has stopped on water is when it has run out of fuel. After refuelling it has always started within 1-3 pulls.
Once, launching at an unfamiliar boat ramp, I slipped carrying the motor and briefly submerged it. I removed the cowl and shook the motor to get rid of the water. There is a foam filter in the air intake and I could see it was a bit wet, but I couldn't easily remove it. I dried what I could with a small towel. After a couple of pulls it spluttered to life and ran a bit rough for a short time but then ran normally the rest of the day. That was 40 faultless engine hours ago!

That's great to hear and very encouraging after my experience with the Tohatsu. I will probably buy the Suzuki as I don't see any other better motor for use on the TI.


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