Outboard Brand

[skip]

Changing the prop while out at sea is not something I would even think about. Its better to keep the lower pitch props and have your mind at rest that if one fails you can still plane the boat with one motor.

Totally agree I would not want to change at sea especially in rough weather. You can't keep the lower pitch props on the boat during normal running with both engines as you would be over-revving and losing lots and lots of performance. Basically the props would have no bite/push through the water. You'd have super fast acceleration but would max out very very quickly!

[Moonwalker]

Too bad! Does that also apply for large twin motors in the 150hp range?

[malvizzu]

Is there any one who knows if the new 2 strokes Etec's can handle slow speed for over 12hours? cause with my Suzuki I've never had any problems!!

With my 50HP Etec he maximum i throlled was 5 hours at say 900-1000 revs with no trouble at all. If i'm not mistaken my engine can go down to 750 revs for hours without engine getting hot but I've never tried it or had the needs to try it.

[Shaftbomb]

Malvizzu your etec is one hell of a motor....i did a sea test with Darius of the 300hp etec and was really impressed by the quality of the motor.

[lazyfisherman]

What about trolling at VERY low speeds for an extended period of time? here I mean speeds down to 1 knot or so as when trolling with livebait or pieces of squid? Will a large single outboard (close to the maximum rated for the boat) allow this? Or would the slowest speed possible be too high such that an auxilliary will have to be used?

[Shaftbomb]

Trolling at one knot???   

[benri]

with a suzuki 140 I manage to troll at those speeds for 5-6 hours without any problem. My mate also has a selva 100 where he manages to do it too.
The only problem is sometimes when you're in favour of the wind/current when you exceed that speed even with the engine on free!
What's a trolling valve by the way?

[Moonwalker]

Yes I believe my suzuki DF90 is capable of those low speeds too. While deep bottom fishing and with some wind from the back, I keep the motor on reverse at the slowest revs. Never had any problems with engine heating.

[skip]

Trolling Valves are used on inboards with shafts and they help to lower the rpm at the drive to get the slow speed required. On an outboard you can't do that, you can only drop to say 800rpm so if you're still too fast, use a drogue chute to slow you down (a sea anchor)

[benri]

thanks nick!

[lazyfisherman]

From the above it seems that a 4 stroke outboard, at least a suzuki may be ideal if one wants to troll at such slow speeds. Are the modern 2 strokes such as the etec capable of a similar performance at such low speeds? I have no boating experience other than with very small and slow boats but who knows, I might consider getting something a little better in the future so it is good to know such things!

[skip]

It's something I would love to try as it's a question that keeps coming up. Can the ETECs handle extended periods of trolling at low revs without issues.

Perhaps we can arrange with RLR to take out one of their boats, along with the ETEC computer/software and run some diagnostics on the engine.... Pre-start of trolling, during and after a few more hours. See how things like burn, water temps etc hold up.

[malvizzu]

Checked with Darius of RLR and he confirmed that the plugs of the ETECs are guaranteed for 300 hours of use, irrelevant of trolling at low speeds or high speeds. If one assumes the average use per summer can be between 50 – 65 hours for a summer, this is very good.

[skip]

I'm hoping that we can soon make available a computer diagnostic print-out taken from an ETEC 75hp used locally by a person who specifically does low rpm trolling.

The print out will show the percentage used the most, eg. <2000rpm etc etc

[Moonwalker]

Would be very interesting to do such reports for other brands too.