Picking a motor

Folks,
I'm looking at buying a 14' Polar Kraft flat bottom that doesn't have a motor on it. I have a chance to get a 25 hp Mercury to go on it, but I think it's a long shaft motor. I've never had to fit a motor to a jon boat before, so I thought I'd ask the experts. Would a long shaft work or should I find a short shaft for it?

Thanks in advance.

Find a short Imo.

I agree with Bugpac. But I know sometimes it can be hard to find the correct motor for your boat in your price range and in that case you could make a longshaft work. A jack plate would be required though to get the most out of it on a short transom.

Anyone know what a manual jack plate would cost?

I'm going to show my noobie here some, but can anyone tell me how to tell if a motor will fit a particular boat? Is there some ratio of ransom height to shaft length that I should shoot for? Maybe a measurement of how far the prop hub should be below the bottom of the boat?

Again, thanks for all of the help. This is an awesome forum.

Fishstickman said:

Anyone know what a manual jack plate would cost?

Click to expand...

A couple of people on here built their own jack plates with Aluminum angle and bar stock. Ran about 50$ if memory serves, otherwise there's the Minijacker from BPS that will run you about 80$ but it's cast aluminum and easy enough to mod. Speaking of mods, one of them on here did a build with one of the minijackers, it looked really nice.

Any way you look at it, you're trying to make up a 5" height difference between a LS and a SS motor - that's a lot of motor to put way up in the air. Most jack plates will only get you up about 4", and that's a lot of strain on the transom unless you strengthen it.

Difficult, but I think the SS is the best option.

Fishstickman said:

Folks,
I'm looking at buying a 14' Polar Kraft flat bottom that doesn't have a motor on it. I have a chance to get a 25 hp Mercury to go on it, but I think it's a long shaft motor. I've never had to fit a motor to a jon boat before, so I thought I'd ask the experts. Would a long shaft work or should I find a short shaft for it?

Thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

Measure from top of Transom to bottem of boat if its 15-17" you need short shaft ..If it measures 20-22" you need long shaft..When its all done that will put your Cavatation plate about even with bottem of boat +- 1 "...cva34

You're the man. That's the info I need.

Thanks to everyone for the advice. Now I just need to get the boat and get my measurements...

Fingers crossed that I can get the boat.

good luck...