Lowe L1652MT mod project

RiverRobCA · Aug 2, 2016

Hey all, new guy here, long time stalker on this site. Last year the wife and I bought our first Jon boat to fish the NorCal region and have been enjoying it immensely. With a good amount of boat use under our belt, I've figured out what items we "need" to add and which would be "nice" to have. That list is below, but I wanted to start off with a question for the pros.

Our boat came equipped with floor/side aluminum "skins", which is great functionally but makes it difficult to access the "indented routes" on the sides where I see a lot of you run your electrical. I've already determined that I can run wire from the stern up to the bow by going under the floors the whole way, but that doesn't allow me to bring electrical into the middle bench (say for a live well or battery charger). Has anyone dealt with this before? Are my only two options to either run wire over the top (messier look) or to drill out the rivets of the skin to temporarily install the wire underneath?

Here's what the "skins" look like (don't have a good shot on my phone so this is one I found online.

The list of mods we are planning are:
Musts: front deck w/ storage, carpet all over (the boat gets so hot in the sun), rod storage of some type, cup holders, new seat mounts. Longer term niceties: bow trolling motor, electric anchor mate system, live well, bilge pump, nav lights, remote steering console and setup for comfort (we have a tiller Tohatsu 20 HP currently).

Here's a shot in the Sac river. I'll post more pics of the boat as it is currently when I can. Thanks for any thoughts!

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archery68 · Aug 2, 2016

For me having a flat bottom jet, I would not have carpet in the bottom of my boat. Still gets very hot, and hard to keep clean. Here is southern Missouri the most common floor is perforated aluminum. The jet boat dealers here install it. They put in braces and screw it down. Does not get hot at all. It's close to the water of course and stays cool. When I smallmouth fish in the summer I never wear shoes of any kind. I have carpet on my decks and it gets hot but not so hot I can't be bare footed.

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archery68 · Aug 2, 2016

My floor is very easy to clean as well.

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RiverRobCA · Aug 3, 2016

archery68 said:
For me having a flat bottom jet, I would not have carpet in the bottom of my boat. Still gets very hot, and hard to keep clean. Here is southern Missouri the most common floor is perforated aluminum. The jet boat dealers here install it. They put in braces and screw it down. Does not get hot at all. It's close to the water of course and stays cool. When I smallmouth fish in the summer I never wear shoes of any kind. I have carpet on my decks and it gets hot but not so hot I can't be bare footed.

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Thanks archery, that really surprises me that perforated aluminum would stay cooler than marine carpet. I've not seen that yet on boats on this site. Because I have the floor skins already in, it would probably be easy to install on the floors (no exposed ribs) and just use carpet for the benches and deck. All I know is that I want to bring my dogs fishing with me but can't do it now because their paws would burn off -- I swear the boat could fry an egg if we're out on it past midday in the summer (+100 deg).

A couple adds to the boat that have worked well so far. Wife insisted on getting a bimini top which I resisted at first but actually has come in clutch on numerous trips -- glad we have it. Doesn't combine well with casting obviously but for the other times when we're just lounging it's great. And it keeps her happy and fishing with me longer. [emoji106]

Also installed a Garmin Echo 551dv fishfinder. Rather than drill through the transom, I bought one of those over the top clamps from BPS, which has worked well and seems to be high quality construction. I did get a lot of vibration between the metal clamp and transom when running the motor with 25%+ throttle but "solved" that for the most part by putting a sock in between the metal of the clamp and the bottom of the transom where the transducer is mounted. It softens the vibration a lot. After a trip, I just loosen the clamp and pull the sock out to dry so it's not wet and mashed against the hull constantly. Seems to work well enough and just cost me a pair of old black socks.

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archery68 · Aug 4, 2016

RiverRobCA said:
archery68 said:

For me having a flat bottom jet, I would not have carpet in the bottom of my boat. Still gets very hot, and hard to keep clean. Here is southern Missouri the most common floor is perforated aluminum. The jet boat dealers here install it. They put in braces and screw it down. Does not get hot at all. It's close to the water of course and stays cool. When I smallmouth fish in the summer I never wear shoes of any kind. I have carpet on my decks and it gets hot but not so hot I can't be bare footed.

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Click to expand...

Thanks archery, that really surprises me that perforated aluminum would stay cooler than marine carpet. I've not seen that yet on boats on this site. Because I have the floor skins already in, it would probably be easy to install on the floors (no exposed ribs) and just use carpet for the benches and deck. All I know is that I want to bring my dogs fishing with me but can't do it now because their paws would burn off -- I swear the boat could fry an egg if we're out on it past midday in the summer (+100 deg).

A couple adds to the boat that have worked well so far. Wife insisted on getting a bimini top which I resisted at first but actually has come in clutch on numerous trips -- glad we have it. Doesn't combine well with casting obviously but for the other times when we're just lounging it's great. And it keeps her happy and fishing with me longer. [emoji106]

Also installed a Garmin Echo 551dv fishfinder. Rather than drill through the transom, I bought one of those over the top clamps from BPS, which has worked well and seems to be high quality construction. I did get a lot of vibration between the metal clamp and transom when running the motor with 25%+ throttle but "solved" that for the most part by putting a sock in between the metal of the clamp and the bottom of the transom where the transducer is mounted. It softens the vibration a lot. After a trip, I just loosen the clamp and pull the sock out to dry so it's not wet and mashed against the hull constantly. Seems to work well enough and just cost me a pair of old black socks.

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not sure if the perforated floor would be cool if you put it on top of sheet aluminum, if that's what your talking about when u say skins. I think it needs air under it and it stays cool. I like the additions you have made to your boat, especially your transducer mount for your fish finder. I want to add one to my boat I'm just not wanting to drill holes in my boat and I will only use my boat when going slow looking for crappie/brush piles. I run a jet on flat bottom and running skinny water and lots of folks tear transducers of their jet rigs here so the mount like u have might be the ticket. Thanks for the pics. Here a pic of my boat on a river here in south central Missouri. Good fishing to u.

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RiverRobCA · Oct 2, 2016

So I've started the front deck, finally. Realized I'm pretty horrible at this kind of stuff but it is a good amount of fun combined with frustration and confusion. We'll see how it goes.

Because of the aluminum skins that cover the floor and ribs, options to secure the vertical part of the deck were more limited but I'm hoping these elbow bracket things do the trick. I'll be adding similar brackets on the side where the horizontal piece connects with the side of the boat.

This literally took me like 7 hours to figure out. [emoji16]

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