Hi Bob,
Good luck with your project. It's nice to hear
another boat is on the production floor.
I used 36 volt motors but they aren't easy to find.
For your rear thruster, you can find 36 volt golf cart motors but you have to
build some kind of bearing assembly to hold the prop shaft. The ones the
plans are designed around were custom
built for Kittredge. I found 3/4 HP 36 volt
motors as a salvage house for my side thrusters. Maybe Minkota's would be
a better bet.
The batteries just slide in. I guess you
could wrap a line around the most forward one and yank them all out
easier. I'd have to check on the battery size. I can't remember
right off.
I installed the battery pod through hull ports as
the plans show but didn't use them. Instead I welded in hunk of steel
drilled with separate holes for brass rods I used as conductors for power.
The blue disk you see is a plastic insulator that keeps the brass rods from
contacting the hull. Also, each threaded brass rod is epoxies in and has
nuts on each end to keep it in place. I wasn't sure if I was going to use
a variable speed controller of just select what battery voltages I need to do a
slow, medium and high, so I have extra conductors coming from the pod to the
hull.
Where are you located? I'm in eastern
Pennsylvania.
Dan H.
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