Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

I was walking back to the boat from one of the lakeside restaurants, and I noticed that my motor seems to sit low in the water. I've never had any issues and the boat runs great, but it just seems low. This picture is with nobody on board, and probably about 30 gallons of fuel (35 gal tank). The tank is in the center toon. My transom does extend further aft than most other pontoon boats and I know that contributes some, but I'd be curious to hear what others here think about my motor position.

engine model number? is it a 25" inch shaft or 20" No way that's correct, your exhaust looks like it is at or slightly below water level, if you had to back down in a heavy wave, or even come to neutral quickly while at cruise, the water would half cover the engine, and could cause inversion, where the engine ingests water through the exhaust ports. what hole are the top engine mount bolts going through? Look at that engine pod and make sure it is bolted in correctly, if this is a newer boat under warranty I would send that picture to your dealer, your toons are not low in the water, so it's not excessive boat stern weight.

don't think iv'e ever seen one that low, WOW that's low

It's an F150LB. I always thought it was a 25" shaft, but I'm not 100% sure. Some websites show that model # as a 20", some show it can be either. The motor is mounted in the top most holes, so it's as how as it can be mounted. FYI, the boat is a tritoon, so it's not an engine pod, it's a full length log.

The boat is not quite two years old and still fully warranted. I sent a dealer the picture and await his reply.

steve1313 wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 03, 2019 6:41 pm

It's an F150LB. I always thought it was a 25" shaft, but I'm not 100% sure. Some websites show that model # as a 20", some show it can be either. The motor is mounted in the top most holes, so it's as how as it can be mounted. FYI, the boat is a tritoon, so it's not an engine pod, it's a full length log.

The boat is not quite two years old and still fully warranted. I sent a dealer the picture and await his reply.

I don't understand your explanation from the look of the picture the engine is mounted as "LOW" as it can be, I guess auto-correct got you in your reply, so I don't know if you meant to say "as HIGH as it can be mounted" or LOW. I see no room between the top of the transom and the mounting bracket top section. It appears you need to move the engine UP to the second, or third hole, most come from the dealer on #2, I raised mine to #3. raising the engine is pretty easy, crank the tongue jack all the way down on your trailer, tilt the motor in almost all the way, loosen the lower bolts in the bracket slots, build up some wooden blocks on something to rest the skeg on, remove the top bolts, begin to crank the bow up with the trailer jack, this will bring the stern down and then place your top bolts in the 2nd or 3rd down bracket holes and align with the holes in the transom, a long alignment punch or something similar will help.

The picture shows a normal height set up, with a tritoon I think most are now 25" transoms, but your dealer can answer that, IF you do have a 25" transom and your 150 should be a 25" shaft then you need to raise the engine, you will probably see some performance gains also.

Flounder-
The motor is mounted as LOW as possible. In your picture, the top bolts are in hole #1.

FYI, I don't have a trailer and it's in a slip at my marina, but my dealer has always been great so I would expect them to handle this. I'm not quite sure why they delivered it this way. I may have to swing by their showroom and see if other similar new boats are setup this way (just to satisfy my curiousity).

That's exactly what I would do, that set up is just wrong. I'm sure they will fix it for you, it will be interesting to see what your RPMs and speed does once the motor is raised, are you running a stainless Yamaha Reliance prop? My exact motor came with a 15 pitch reliance.

Here's the story of my prop.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=25641

With my current setup, I run right at about 40mph at 6k RPM

Can't wait for the update if your dealer agrees and you raise the motor, I re-read your prop thread, you may even see an increase in speed if you get the motor up some.

It almost looks like they added spacers at the top of the mounting bracket???? The motor looks like it is tucked way under to me or it could be the Yam design???
I would think it needs to be raised. Now I want to go check the looks of my height.
Just curious, do you ever get blowout? If not, you are probably mounted too low.

No doubt, that’s mounted WAY too low!

Its mounted at the perfect height - for a submarine.

I don't think raising it to the top holes is going to make any difference. It needs an entirely new mounting set up. That's WAY, way wrong. You need to get it up a FOOT higher at a minimum. Generally speaking the lower it sits you'll get more "traction" and a better hole shot as well as quicker to plane. Raising the prop to just below water line will help with top end speed. On pontoons - since they plane at a very low angle - this effect isn't nearly as profound as on a v-hull boat.

Just to kind of close this thread out, I finally was able to have a conversation with my dealer about this. Here's kind of a summary of what I was told...…
1)It's a 20" shaft motor, which kind of surprised me. I figured it should be a 25". He says everything they sell has a 20" shaft and I know they are one of the largest dealers of the Sweetwater brand in the area.

2)Visually, Yamaha motors look like they are mounted low because of the cowl design. At the time of the pic, I also had it trimmed completely down, which is a bit of negative trim, lowering it even more. When I was on the lake over the weekend, I did confirm that all the Yamaha's I saw were sitting lower than most other brands, although mine is lower than most others (but not by much).

3)He's says not to be worried about inversion. His example was all the times these motors are used offshore in heavy chop or when they are backing down on a fish with no problems.

4)Even though the dealer is about 75 miles away and I didn't buy a trailer with my boat, he's willing to come to the lake, put my boat on a trailer and lift the engine one or two holes, although that would only raise it about 3/4" an inch per hole. He'll do it (at no charge), but said it's really not necessary.

I took a look at the Sweetwater/Godfrey website and there are several pictures of boats like mine that have the motor about as low as mine. Here's a couple of examples I snipped from their website. Also, in the original picture I posted, my motor was turned away from the camera a bit. I noticed this weekend that when perfectly parallel to the boat, it doesn't appear quite that low.

Long story short, the boat has always run great, and I don't really think I have a problem, and if I do, the dealer knows about my concerns, and no matter what happens I'm confident they'll stand behind it.

I'm a little surprised they are using 20 inch drives on a modern TriToon, I doubt raising would do you any good, I would expect you'll start blowing out (prop ventilation) with any weight at all in the bow, or in turns, so I guess you are best leaving it as is..

Nothing wrong with using a 20" transom on a tritoon