long shaft trolling motor.

[moetrout]

I have a long shaft minn kota that I use on my 12' jon. It gets quite uncomfortable steering it with the shaft being that long. Have any of you ever taken apart a troller like this and cut it down? What is the standard length of short and long shaft minn kotas?

 

[russ010]

I've seen people take the heads off and use a pipe cutter (type you cut steel with... you tighten it down as you spin it around the shaft). The length should be around 32-36".

Whatever you do - Take A LOT OF PICTURES before you start unhooking wires from the head. It looks simple enough when you take the head off, but trust me... it gets confusing even when looking at pictures. I would also suggest printing out the pictures before you actually take them off. Number the wires with some type of tape, and even put a small piece of tape over that connection on the head so there is no confusion.

You will probably have to cut back your wires a little, but it is possible... I did it once, but I sure wouldn't want to do it again unless I had to.. but, if it was making me uncomfortable, I would cut it down.

 

[moetrout]

Thanks Russ. I was really curious on the shaft length. I am surprised by your comments on the wires. I would have thought there would only be 3 wires in there. Forward, reverse and ground. What do they do, run a wire for every speed? My head wobbles a little on that troller too so this will probably fix that as well.

 

[russ010]

I don't know what all the wires are for... I practiced on an OLD trolling motor before I started on one of my newer ones... I want to say there were 6 different wires in there... red, yellow, black, brown, green, blue and white (there may be more, I can't remember).

All I know is that it was a pain in the butt... the only picture I took was with my cell phone and it was hard to do it on the old motor.. I used labels and took pictures with my real camera and printed them out and looked at it and the head before I started to make sure I wouldn't mess anything up.

 

[moetrout]

Well, thanks for the advice. I think I'm gonna tackle that one this weekend.

 

[moloch16]

You can buy shafts from the manufacture (depending on how old it is). Might want to save the long shaft for when you get a different boat and need a longer shaft.