Day 1 of the motor swap on the Digitroll at Vt Home and Marine. The 4 cylinder 150 hp is off and on the pallet to be picked up by the buyer and the 6 cylinder 200 hp Mercury 4 stroke is mounted with new cables and Vt home will finish up tomorrow morning.
Trolling no problem Gerry. It's actually a lot smoother and quieter than a 4 cylinder. 6 cylinders are incredibly smooth. Mercury has made a 50% quieter improvement to the 4 strokes with these new engines 175-300 hp models. Verado like!
Vt Home and Marine completed the install and some other work I had done today at 3 pm. Photo back home in the driveway at 4 pm. Hope to water test it tomorrow or next week! Starship Enterprise at Warp 10!
Fantastic afternoon for testing and breaking the new 200 hp in out of Malletts Bay! Don Marcellino my fishing buddy of 13 years helped with the heavy lifting for 3 hours today. We were lucky there was some broken ice from the duck hunters out in the early am to launch my boat at 12:30 pm. and 27F air temps. Shot 4 separate videos showing the starting / on plane / cruising / trolling totalling 4 minutes. We traveled 57 miles today and hit a top speed of 47.9 mph at 5,750 rpm's with an aluminum stock prop! Burned 15.2 gallons of gas that brought us to the Ausable / Willsboro ramp / Providence Island and back to Malletts after 3 hours 10 minutes. This motor exceeded my expectations in all categories today ie. quietness at idle and cruising on plane at any rpm / trolling adjustments with rpms / incredible torque / top end. Some photos from today's 3 hour cruise. We trolled the last 45 minutes after breaking in an landed 3 Lake trout off Providence before calling it a day.
Spliced all 4 videos this morning to combine into one in HD using Viva Video software from segments shot from my iPhone 11 and uploaded to You Tube. One advantage of having teenagers seeing what they use for their video editing software.
Practicing with the I Movie software for editing on the Mac laptop and this is the shortened version You Tube video version shaving off 1 minute 5 seconds from the original 4 minute 10 second version uncut:
Thanks Gerry / Jim / Jason / Mike....... This will be my 3rd Mercury 4 stroke big engine for trolling in the last 13 seasons. Each one keeps improving with innovations! Can't wait till April 2020 now! Incredible engines! Super quiet! It's amazing how many people have joined the movement to kick the kicker off the transom in the last decade.
The 2017 Lund 1800 Tyee I bought last August came with a 2017 4S 115 Merc with only about 40 hours on it. I am very impressed by how quiet the motor is. Also the fuel economy.
And Ron, your video on the Mercury digital control tach persuaded me to have Vt Home and Marine install one on my boat.
Great to hear Tom! That combo is fantastic! Fly Guy is still running my 115 hp 2006 4 stroke on my former Sea Nymph 19 ft. after 13 seasons! The current buyer will be super happy with my 150 hp we took off last week. These engines are bullet proof! You made a great purchase on that Lund it sounds!
Spring is getting closer this week. Saying good bye to my 150 hp 4 stroke 2013 on Wednesday at Noon. My NY buyer is picking it up. He was in Florida since last November and is back a few weeks early excited to get it on his 21 ft cuddy glass fishing boat to fish Ontario for the hot spring brown bite in front of Oswego. 1,200 hours and 7 seasons it's been a great engine! Hoping to get out in a month around April 10th-15th here on our lake waiting for water temps to hit low 40's with a ways to go for that. Nice to see a few boats out over the weekend here. The 200 hp is ready! Already some nice browns taken over the weekend in Oswego.