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Hello everyone,

This may never be interesting to anyone else, because not too many people like fishing motors. But... I thought I would post it anyway. Inspired by the fact that my fishing motor has a cavity in the lower unit that lets it run with "I can't believe it's not low water pickups" and seeing that there was another thread about drilling the lower unit on hpbc, guided by Baja200merc from S&F, we broke into it. Maybe someone else will end up with an ETEC and this will help them.

Preparing

End result


We were able to maintain water pressure at a much higher height than before. We'll see if it ends up with more speed. Regardless, it's much better than the "low" water pickups that BRP offers stock.

Cool.
What did you plug the upper holes with, thickened epoxy?

That's a good question and a good story.

For that, I need to give a huge and I mean HUGE shout-out and thanks to Brent/Rowboat for that. He spent countless hours creating machined aluminum plugs that are very tight fitting on the side intakes. When coupled with marine silicone, they seal the side intakes completely. We actually had to make use of the removable parts when our stock front intakes got plugged by debris last weekend. I will post a picture when I get the chance to show the great job Brent does.

Nice work.

Very cool! I would be crapping my pants as I drilled into a fresh gear case lol! I am glad it turned out. It likley cannot come from the factory that way because Merc has a patent on it. Nice treat that they left behind though.

I'm guessing that wasn't a coincidence!

Glad it's working out for you Matt. Keep us posted on your progress.

The low water pickups have improved the control significantly at WOT, basically 0 chinewalk at 75. I know that's not all that fast for a lot of you, but it's fast for us! Anyway, possibly more importantly it's also really helped a lot with peace of mind.

I think it's time to replace the impeller, as there has never been enough water pressure since we got the damn thing according to the BRP literature. That's not because of any work we are doing (now or before), it's just never been the right level. It does not seem like the low pickups and raising ability have helped speed yet, but that's probably our learning curve. We did not get much time to open up on the water this weekend.

However, we can now raise the motor all the way up on the jackplate and not lose pressure, which was the main thing.

Now that you can raise the motor you can possibly run larger props and not lose RPM on the motor which is where the speed comes from

Yea, definitely. Right now we're redlining 28p Rakers (Raker I and II) and 28p Trophies. I need to find some large diameter ~30ish pitch 4 blade propellers to try. Right now the slip is around 14% at 6100, which I think is the redline on these motors, and if it isn't, then it's close enough. The literature seems to want it down closer to 5500 at WOT. Anyway, as mentioned, we're getting the water pump changed as we have never had enough pressure, it's always been close to overheating. We'll give it a run this weekend again and see if that helps the temperature.