well ive been looking for a mud motor for awhile ended up going with a 25hp go devil powered by a kholer motor. should be getting it next weekend! now i just need to find me a boat for it to go on and ill be all set.

let me know how u like it. thinking about buying a longtail myself. had surface drive and ended up back with an outboard.

Will do man should have it next weekend

Why did you get rid of the surface drive?

surface drive didnt have the torque that even my 10 horse longtail had. after getting stuck like sven times i found myself avoiding back waters. So i sold it and got an outboard and if i wanna go play i put my little longtail on, it does fine just slow.

plus I am a farmer in south arkansas and I am surrounded by equipment with troublesome moving parts, and the surface drive had twice the moving parts as the longtail and that was without a clutch or power trim. it just didnt impress me and I can buy ALL the parts to repair my longtail at the local auto parts store.

I am shopping for a used longtail with any brand motor on it.

Have fun! GD was the first mud toy on the block, I've had three of them and they were very reliable and low cost to maintain. If you have smaller waters, short runs, hard bottom w/obstacles, are not in a big hurry, the LT is the ticket. The kohler is a good powerplant, tends to be a little cold weather finicky, but has plenty of torque. Get you all the requisite safety gear, wear you kill switch lanyard (a life-saver), get plenty of stick time, balance your load, and use common sense. Oh yeah, get a spare prop now, carry a grease gun, keep you battery charged up, and maybe carry one of those "zap" boxes in case you battery fails. Search here for tool kit and items in that. Cheap mod= advance the throttle to around 4100 rpm out of the water; steelflex/gatorglide the hull bottom, switch to synthetic oil/grease, remove the foam precleaner from the air cleaner, set the proper planing depth of the prop by adjusting the cavitation plate 1/8" at a time up/down.

thank you very much for the advice. thats why i joined this site!
the longtail i have is shopbuilt so i cut/welded the cav plate where i needed it for my transom. its got a 340 cc briggs motor (10 hp?). I get about 13 mph with me and my german sheperd, trolling motor, and cooler on a 17x48 duracraft.

honestly I will probably go with the 23 van cause its got recoil backup

Good choice, brokefarmboy82! The 23's recoil start is a plus over the 25/27 HP motors from Kohler. It will better serve your 1748 hull, as you are underpowered for now, but if you have a short run in a sheltered marsh speed is not important. There are plenty of parts to mod the 23 if you want to. I know the 23 surface drive on a hull like yours really scoots.

x

Well said, rangerp! The longtail is like the basic work F-150 work truck except you have a 4x4. Nothing fancy, gets the job done, carries a good load at a nominal speed. If you want speed and got money to burn, get a shortaill and mod her up. All the speed, bells and whistles, fancy camo, etc. does not necessarily mean more ducks or fish. Look at this way, you can slap the LT on most jon boats, you don't need an all-welded hull, and your repair costs will be miniscule compared to anything else, shortail or conventional outboard. Obviously, it has a larger turning radius, you need a strong left arm (unless you've changed the handle), no neutral (yet), no gear reduction so increasing rpms reaches a plateau of diminishing gains, is not the motor for long runs or big waters, and trailering is more of a chore. If it does fit the needs, I think it is the best motor for the money and very reliable.

Thanks fellas! Where Im located is Gillett, Arkansas on the Arkansas River backwaters lots of stumps, hyacinth , alligator weed, (and alligators too), and lily pads. No mud flats. The surface drive SUCKED in the sand bottom stuff around here. Like I said before, I love the longtail I have. It is balanced so well I can run it sitting down WOT in the vegetation and stumps. Sooooo could not do that with my mud buddy hyper unless i was in open water.

Another thing that worries me is that I hear lots of guys talking about running go devils and mud buddy longtails standing up. Is that how it is with them cause ive also talked with Arlon from b*******r and that is definitely an option for me. In fact, if they werent so far away I would already have one. Cause I know you can run those sitting down.

standing up isnt a huge issue, just takes some getting used to... If your rig is balanced like it should be, you can kinda use the handle as something to steady yourself on... On my boat I learned without a grab bar and have hit numerous submerge objects at WOT, and although I dont honestly have a grab bar in my boat I would imagine it would be nice to shorten the learning curve of a longtail at higher speeds. If you wear your PFD and killswitch at all times you will be fine... I'd rather be standing anyways, much easier to make a sudden turn to avoid something submerged you don't see until last second, and you can see said submerged obstacles... lol

I've never used a grab bar, and that's since 1989 with LT's. I think it is a common sense thing to do. I like that swing away bar that MB/BPS makes, it side mounts and you can fold it down when setup but I am not sure it provides enough reach since I am 6'4" and its $129. I don't have a bench seat in the middle to mount it on like some, it is an open floor. I balance myself well on the floor well and I only stand when I'm running in the shallow marsh and sit when running in the canal or open lake. We've got regs here in the marsh to run a flag up at least 12' above the boat for visibility and I stand a lot in daylight to see prevent any possible close encounters. Oh yeah, I was sitting back in '99, when a speeding bass boat cut over me at high speed- I was able to jump forwards and survive- he cut the gunwale down to the waterline and shaved off the top of my motor. Now that was a close call!

Ill TIG me up a grab bar.