What would you do?

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arkansasnative

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Dec 6, 2009
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Jonesboro, Arkansas
Ok i have finally broken down and decided to get an opinion or two on here. For the past year i have been designing floatation pods for my transom and i cant decide to go thru the hassle of building them or not. Since my boat is so narrow (1432) i have really had to work with the pod width, but on the positive, the mini jacker i added eliminated any clearance issues out to about 16 inches past the transom. The pods i have come up with will give me almost 100 lbs of floatation which pretty much compensates for my 9.9 johnson and gas. The starboard pod is slightly larger... im hoping it will help with me sitting a little off center while motoring. My transom is only 13 inches tall so i feel like anything that can give me a little more height will help. Pods are currently being fabbed out of 1/4" plywood and fiberglass via stitch and glue method and they will be bolted on.

My question is: Would it be worth it to go thru the trouble of building them for only 100 extra pounds of floatation?

Here's a pic or two to show how low the rear is...

without me(180 lbs) or a rear seat
379.jpg


with me... still no seat and no mini jacker.
0913001519.jpg
 
I think it would help not only keeping your back end higher in the water, but it should help push your front end down, which should give you more surface area to disperse the water and float higher... at least that's how it works in my brain :LOL2:

Other option is to consider looking for a wider boat. If you have a little cash you didnt mind being tied up for a couple months, you could probably find a wider jon boat now and then sell that jon boat come late spring for more then what you buy the wider one for now... just a though
 
Bigkat650 said:
Other option is to consider looking for a wider boat.

I'd go this route. All said and done, you'll be spending time and money on quite a narrow boat.
 
A number of guys make or buy an extension for their tiller/throttle. If you can work that out, perhaps you can move yourself further forward and eliminate some of the weight in the stern.

I presume that you have already moved the gasoline and batteries forward. The more weight you can move, the less you will be loading down the rear end. Placing the battery and fuel on the opposite side should help some with the tippy feeling.

Using a five gallon bucket, tied down, and moving it around will give you some idea of the weight transfer issues. A gallon of water weighs a bit over 8 lbs. I believe.

However, as a number of guys have already commented...a wider boat is a better boat....for most of us "full-sized" guys. R
 
A nice boat would be great but I have no money right now... between just getting out of college, planning a wedding, trying to buy a house, and trying to find a full time job I am maxxed out... right now I am out 10 bucks on this project and a fully modded boat to my liking so another one is out of the question. Plus boat prices don't drop hardly at all in my area cuz of all the duck hunting.

Gas is a 3 gallon tank that I don't really have anywhere else to put but the battery is up front on the starboard side...
 
arkansasnative said:
A nice boat would be great but I have no money right now... between just getting out of college, planning a wedding, trying to buy a house, and trying to find a full time job I am maxxed out... right now I am out 10 bucks on this project and a fully modded boat to my liking so another one is out of the question. Plus boat prices don't drop hardly at all in my area cuz of all the duck hunting.

Gas is a 3 gallon tank that I don't really have anywhere else to put but the battery is up front on the starboard side...

Hey I feel ya man, I'm trying to build a boat from the hull up without spending hardly any money at all. (for example, someone at work is throwing a couch away, so I stole the cushions off of it to re-purpose the foam as cushioning for my bench seat! haha)

Anyways, probably the easiest and cheapest way to get weight further forward is to use a tiller extension. But I do believe the back floats would help. My suggestion is to search on the sub-forum "Jon and V boat Conversions and Modifications", you should be able to find people who have used the floats on their boats. You could PM the thread starter and see if it made a big difference on their boat. Either that or hang tight and I'm sure you will get someone with some experience with them posting on here.

EDIT:

This could really help ya: https://www.tinboats.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10254

On the last page, the owner say's in the last post '...The pods raised my transom freeboard by over 4" and allowed me to plane out in a foot of water...'

I think you should check it out :)
 
yea... ive searched on them many times and there's only one guy who has fiberglass pods... rook, i sent him a message but haven't heard back yet.

All the other pods including the one you posted the link to are much larger than mine and on bigger boats... hence why he got so much more freeboard than i imagine i would get. Since i'm only 10 dollars in, and i have all the stuff to do it already, and i've been taking pics along the way to make a how-to, i suppose it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and finish them up. Even if they don't work well for me i figure contributing a how-to to the forum that may help somebody in the future will be good enough! Wish me luck!
 
arkansasnative said:
A nice boat would be great but I have no money right now... between just getting out of college, planning a wedding, trying to buy a house, and trying to find a full time job I am maxxed out...

I'd fish your boat as is then, wait to upgrade before adding all those fancy extras.
 
The link Bigkat gave you was my build. I had the same concerns you do when I built mine.

The best advice I can give you is to try with what you have. Bolt holes can be easily patched if you don't like them.

One mistake I made was not having enough rise on the bottom of the pod. They act like a trim tab. It makes the boat plane with almost no bow rise, but cut my top end a little more than I than I wanted.

It seems like people are having very mixed reviews on pods. I just wish I would have added them years ago.

Feel free to PM me if needed.
 
Thanks speck and mike! Yea i have the side panels cut to allow about 1/2" of upward angle toward the rear... i figure it will cut out a couple of pounds of floatation but should give a much smoother ride in choppy water. Boat is going into the surgery room (aka garage) early tomorrow morning for a long weekend of work!
 
Mostly the smaller lakes along the ridge (Poinsett, Frierson, Crowley's Ridge Park) and big creeks/ditches but i spent the summer in Marianna fishing Bear Creek, Horner Neck, Storm Creek, and the rivers around there. I do some trot lining at greers in the summer and usually go crappie fishing south of Helena a couple of times a year on an oxbow on the mississippi. I fish a little at Norfork but mostly do trout and smallmouth when i head up that way... you?
 
I'm in Marked Tree. I fish most of the rivers and lakes around this area. A long time friend just bought a place up on Poinsett Lake. I've been helping him fix it up some so I'll probably be fishing up there a lot more often now. I lived in Heber Springs for a few years and like the fishing there, but don't get back up there very often now. My brother lives down by the Felsenthal refuge and I go down there in the spring and fish the lakes on the refuge for the crappie and bream spawn. When I get this boat project finished, I plan to start hitting Horseshoe lake and trying out as many other lakes as I can find that aren't too far of a drive.
 

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