A few months back I asked about a motor to put on a boat my brother and I already had in the yard. Here's the link..... viewtopic.php?f=4&t=47732 Well we finally picked up a motor for it. We got a used long shank 27 hp Pro-Drive with hydraulic tilt and auto reverse. Now it's time to start working on the boat to mount the motor on and we have no clue about boat building, so we need a few design ideas. The boat is a 1636 made out of 1/8".

First off the sides are 17" tall so we will need to raise the transom height to the 20" needed. We are thinking of cutting the back platform off to fit the hydraulic unit along with the pipe railing and raising the center of the transom up like you normally see on a hunt deck with some channel and then plating it. The current angle on the transom is right around 16 degrees. Is this even the correct angle for a Pro-Drive?

The plan is to add two more longitudinal bracing with a solid aluminum floor and make a built in gas tank up front that would act as a drop down deck off of the existing front deck. The front deck comes back 2' now. We are debating if we should extend the deck a little more and then put the tank off of that, but we don't want to take up too much floor space. Another idea is to make a hatch on the front deck for storage and maybe a small drivers box in the back for wallets and other small stuff. We really want to keep it as open as possible since it's so narrow.

The main purpose of this boat is to get from the launch to the camp and the blinds. From the launch to the camp is almost 10 miles in deep canals. From the camp to the blinds is about half that through cuts in the marsh. There is some good redfishing down the road, so we will probably use it for some quick fishing trips as well. It's not a high dollar custom boat and we aren't expecting to try and make it one. Just looking to polish this turd as well as we can casue we can't afford to buy a new boat and we can do all of the work to it for free... Minus the cost of beer of course. Any ideas or pointers on getting this thing sea worthy would be greatly appreciated. TIA

Here are some pics of it with the old motor, shaft, and rudder taken out.

Small profile.jpg

Small front.jpg

Small back 2.jpg

Here are 2 more picture of it. We are also gutting off that lip around the catwalks and the two pipes.

Small profile 2.jpg

Small back.jpg

I can't tell from those pics, but make sure your sides don't taper in toward the transom, and are straight/flat from mid-beam back. Some inboard boats I've see have that feature. It is not a good one for Mudmotor. Other than that, I think that hull will work just fine. Might be a bit sluggish with that 27hp though.

Would starting from scratch be completly out of the question? For the amount of work your talking about putting in that unit, you might be better off starting from scratch.

Dean, I'll be sure to look if its tapered or not. Why is it not good for mud motors? Just curious. Thanks for the reply.

Fowl, I've never built a boat before so I'm not sure how much work that'll be. Looking at the threads of builds on this site, it looks like a lot more than I'm willing to take on at the moment. I would love to try my hand at it one day. I'm sure I've done more intricate projects, but not on my dime! Also the cost of all the aluminum needed would probably be more than we can afford right now. With this one, I figure a couple weekends and we can have it knocked out.

Mine tapers. It helps with speed, but if your under powered it can hurt.

So this boat with a 27hp would be considered underpowered?

Bump for anymore ideas, opinions, or words of encouragements.........

For all of you apprehensive boat builders, I promise I'm not going to fix it and then try and flip it to steal your business. So help a newbie out!

Let it rip tater chip. If it dont work out just try again. Prodrive calls for a 15* degree transom angle and 19.5" high. Be sure to measure the height at a 90* angle. If you all ready have it at 16* and 20" im sure it'll be fine. Should be a nice rig especially on a budget. Good luck