Recently I bought a 16' Xpress bayou edition boat with a stock 35 Gatortail. I used the boat twice for hunting and was astounded. This is my first mudmotor, so its definitely a transition from holding onto an outboard to holding onto it. I hit a stump for the first time yesterday and the whole thing flew out of the water and the tiller cracked me in the leg pretty bad. I have some questions about the motor that will probably seem pretty simple but hear me out I'm new to mudmotors. With two people in the boat and a moderately light load, I was running about 25-26 mph in deep water once I got the trim in the sweetspot and had 3500 rpms. That seems a tad bit low to me. I feel like my throttle cable is loose, after I trailered it home yesterday i squeezed it while the motor was off and I had waay too much play in it. I started it up and after about 10 seconds it was tight again. Is that normal or should I tighten it? While the boat is running about 3/4 speed, the motor has a throbbing vibration sound to it In addition to the seemingly usual vibrations. Is that also normal or is that a loose belt? Once its opened up the motor seems to quiet down a bit as far as the throbbing vibrations go, but you can still make them out. I have heard that the motors vibrate a lot but I'm not sure if that's excessive or not. Other than these few points, I'm absolutely thrilled with the rig. While I was hunting a drive in blind yesterday the water fell out on me about 2 inches and I was sitting on mud. Fired up the motor, threw it in reverse, worked it a little and I was home free. Coming from an outboard, that was a dream come true.


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I think for RPMs, most guys are around 3,800 or so under load, full throttle.

One of my buddies just got a new GT rig, it wasn't hitting on much at all with 3 of us and gear. The throttle had a lot of slack in it, there is a screw on the throttle linkage with a spring on it. It's a Philips head screw, tighten up on it some and that some fix it.
He was turning 3400-3700 before I tweaked it, now he's around 3900-4000. Your motor should turn I think 4350rpm out of the water, if its not then adjust on that screw till it does.

I have a 18x54 GTB with a 35 GTR and it makes the same throbbing vibration sound at full throttle, I have no idea what's causing it? It vibrates the whole boat down the right side.