Poor Man's Triple Motor 12 Foot Center Console Bass Boat

Today was an exciting day for me because I was waiting for a shipment of

boat

s. There you can see the truck approaching, it wasn't a full truck, but there were a lot of

boat

s there. I was a happy guy with the first load I put out. I went out myself and it was a bunch of touring kayaks, but that's not what this video is about. Happy to have some new boats. You know, I have plans for these things. This one in particular I had my eye on. The first thing to do, of course, was put it in the water.

I put the old trusty five-horse on him and then put him in the water for his first test. I already had an idea of ​​what I wanted to do first. I had to see how it worked. He pleasantly surprised me. The way this load was handled, it jumped across the water quite well. He asked me, what if I had more than one? It was time to test the theory to see if this book could really handle that to be able to do it. I needed a replacement engine. Both batteries weigh exactly the same as one of those five horses, 57 pounds, three of them back there.

I would know what I needed to know that this ship was handling it very well. I had no problem with all that weight in the back. mmm-hmm the wheels are really turning, now it was time to commit to an idea that would make this phone call go much faster. Well, my first step was to take the bottle and place it on the operating table. Yes, sir, this is going to be it. After a lot of work, the first thing I did was reuse the platform that the boats came on. The next thing I did was draw up some plans.

I had an idea of ​​the additional flotation I would need and started here on the transom. At first I noticed that the flat back of this boat turned out to have a lot of shape. After a lot of effort I got a piece of wood that fit nice and snug and screwed it through the existing transom which had a big chunk of I then proceeded to do it all over again, this time I had to drill the base of the boom. with those two pieces joined together. I only made a few small side pieces, which was considerably easier, although I can't have it easy.

I had to imitate the shape of the boat, I mean there's no reason it shouldn't look good, so out came the trusty old jigsaw, oh maybe not, that's teak, gosh, add a jigsaw to get the job done, he's really pushing the boundaries of that. It worked though, now he's starting to look like something, now the job was to make him a little thicker. It sure is nice to have a wooden mustache around the frame. It was almost made a little flimsy, but I had plans to stiffen it up with this bamboo. The fence I had lying around worked great, it was really just going to be a support for what was going to go on top, but before I got to that I needed to drill some holes in this boat because I suspected there was nothing on the back of it. this. boat and it was definitely going to need stiffening, speaking of which, that box I built was going to need more support besides what was right in the transom holes on the sides, eventually it would have bolts in places it couldn't.

Reaching into it with a drill a red hot Allen wrench seemed to work, this was all new territory so although it sounds like how to go 250 I was learning as I went with the rest of the brackets on the back of this. box, it was time to really toughen it up. I knew this would make it strong, somewhat waterproof and was going to make it look good, man I really wasn't looking forward to that. Fiberglass is stingy and chemicals are gross, huh, and it's certainly complicated, but it had to be done now, that's starting to look a lot better and now is the time to make sure this thing is going to float.

This two-part foam is designed for exactly that, adding buoyancy and making it, if there is water. If it went in there, it wouldn't become very heavy and sink the ship. I try to do small increments and do it in a very scientific way instead of just having it explode everywhere. What we have here is a foam chemical process in which two parts expand up to 16 times its volume is made of star matter it is made up of billions of cells and this is what we should make our boat float obviously lately had been seeing a bit of the old Carl Sagan show the cosmos that was wearing on me this project was pretty epic, not as epic as you know, discovering the cosmos, but I was having fun anyway and it was time to really commit and stick this to the rear of the boat.

The whole thing weighed about 35 pounds, but I thought it would add up to about. one hundred and twenty pounds of extra flotation for the boat, that's just the

foot

print on the outside, the coast guard reads these boats, however, based on how much phone they have inside, so after this thing was actually bolted to the side rear of the boat, I thought I'd add a little more of that coast guard flotation to the interior, which essentially just means that if water ever got inside the boat, the thing wouldn't go to the bottom and would continue to float a little even if it flooded, that was the plan.

At least to implement the plan it took many glasses and many rounds of mixing foam. Well, I hope this boat now has enough flotation for what I'm going to do. It is certainly much more rigid. I'm going to add a little bit more foam here though and they really make the back of this indestructible. These pieces of composite board I have lying around make good covers to fill the holes I had made before. The name is King starboard. I'll talk more about that later, in the meantime, it's time to foam now with those voids here filled with foam, this is rock solid compared to what's soft and flexible, so this triangular piece acts as a reinforcement for support the entire rear of the boat.

Another interesting thing is that nothing. It sticks to the polyethylene, so anything I dripped on will clean up very easily, speaking of cleanliness, it's time to cut off the excess material that is too tall. Another thing I needed to cut, what are the seats? The main reason for doing this was to salvage the plastic so we could make that rear transom look better by using the exact same plastic that the rest of the boat was made from. My idea was to make this look as factory as possible. Some of the plastic I used had to be a different color due to the large size. size I needed, but I fixed it by using some spray paint, the staples on this gun were meant to be outside, maybe not in the water, but I eventually wanted to cover them and didn't worry about them rusting, really too bad, are here.

When making some reinforcements that will stiffen that piece in the back and sit right above where those staples were, I tried to hide as many screws as I could just to keep it out of someone's weather in the back. It would be exposed, but that's okay. I think this was starting to look pretty good. It's a good thing I had a lot of cardboard lying on the starboard side, of course I had a lot of weight on the back of this boat, but I knew I would prepare myself by adding a lot more additional flotation, so after I had the back close, it was time to thinking about what I was going to do as a seat and it turned out I had a seat sitting here and it was too nice to pass up.

I quickly got to work and took this thing apart: the pivot at the base lowered the seat and then I walked over here to get some cardboard to start designing the

center

console

. I also dug into my wooden stash, an idea was starting to emerge. I was really liking my new replacement jigsaw. He had been using a piece of trash for so long. It was nice to have a real tool to play with, truth be told, these abrasive discs came up short. The work of shaping these things to fit made short work of making a mess as well.

However, cutting these things out wasn't exactly that easy and I didn't want to waste them, so I made a lot of cardboard templates, this was a very quick way. for me to know whether or not I was going to like the shape of the

center

console

I was designing mm-hm feels good. I also had to figure out how I was going to make this work from up there while I was designing it. and trying to make it look good, I was also trying to figure out how to make a throttle and a shifter, since there were three

motor

s.

You would need three accelerators and three gear levers. I wanted him to work independently, so I couldn't have just one. handle, he was my initial idea for three different handles, it just uses one pivot point and now it was a matter of just trying to find a place for it right here would be good to try to stabilize this thing. I thought a handle on top Yes, this would tie them all together and hopefully be removable so I could use them individually. This bill started to get a little more complex than I normally like, although I don't exactly have precise tools, but with some care I was able to do it.

I worked with the finalized idea to turn my attention to the center console. I decided to make it permanent by designing it with King Star board instead of just old cardboard. If you think this took a long time, imagine me in real time. It was nice to take a break when the UPS guy brought some new toys. Things were starting to look very real as they manually tracked these things down within the warehouse and finally put my DIY easel to use. The idea was to find out if these things were working or not. to fit it was going to be very tight with those rudder handles, so the first task was to take these new engines and start taking them apart.

I'm surprised how easily these Atilla handles came loose. Pleasantly surprised I must say because things like the throttle cables have to be rerouted and this is something I have never done before. I quickly realized I was going to need a hole here. The speed square made sure the bit didn't go through the gas tank. I then had to design a bracket that would help join the three

motor

s together. I bolted all three of them together after cutting them and that made sure they were also temporarily bolted to the motors and then I temporarily bolted all three of them together and this was actually a good idea.

At the time it was nice to see the three of them turned together while work was being done to make the rest of the back of the boat look nice and to make the center console work, which meant installing kill switches at the front. This material was too thick so I had to router it halfway so I could hit the factory kill switches. I don't know what I would do without that little dremel tool. Meanwhile, there was that hole in the motors where Attila drives it if he was plugged in. up with you guessed it king starboard that's where I could do anything with those things now all the wires to measure the wires I used twine or line rope or whatever you guys call it I paid for it and taped it in place and then wrapped it I took them up to take them to the nautical store.

I was going to Bullfrog Creek Marine to see my friend Mark. I was hoping to get some advice from him because I felt a little lost. Devils? This is an old rudder. cable flywheel which is cool when they made it with cables and pulleys, oh I see, keep it simple. Mark is an extremely generous guy when it comes to giving advice and helping people fix their boats if you have a boat and want an honest person. opinion, an honest mechanic, a good mechanic, go check out the Rock Creek market, so I bought a new used steering wheel and I'm doing a lot of these things on this boat, but I wanted to leave it to an expert here because certain things just you don't want to waste time and Mark told me something that I thought was actually very, very profound, which is, yeah, so when you're trying to make the steering work, you really have to be careful because boats don't have brakes, so that you have to do it. so I can get away from danger June 30, 1985 I got hit by a boat because the steering broke I'm kind of an example of why you don't play with the steering it's one of a million reasons I turned to brand when it comes to learn how to do things correctly, so thanks man.

I appreciate that I came home with all the cables. I needed a steering wheel and a cup holder that was cold and instructions. Yes, I don't need many structures. I was glad. although I had a way to use the old transom, the one that came with the boat, I didn't want to leave it there and not put it to good use, it turned out to be a great place to mount the steering system that I bought from Mark, I could have been able to do I did this on my own, but buying these things had to be a lot safer and it was definitely a lot quicker to run the cables through, however that was quite difficult, there was just a little bit of space inside the helmet. the inside of this boat, but enough to make it work, get the gear shift working, although that was going to require a lot of little brackets, a complicated job that I probably couldn't have done with wood again, that wonderful starboard composite material came in Playing around connecting the wires to the motors also required some fiddly work.

These supports hadYou have to turn too because the splintered handle doesn't just move forward and backward. The rear end of the cables I just connected to the motor housing with the bolt that required small spacers, but that was easy enough to set up this way, the cable sleeve moved and the cable stayed in place, in fact , seeing it work was quite an achievement for me, then I had to take the front end of the cable and plug it into my home connection, so where the kill switches were, those had to be done too. I looked around for some cord to use because I'm a cheapskate and I saw this phone cord hanging here, it had been there for a long time, I thought no one was using it.

I might have been wrong, it's okay, honey, I'll see you soon, honey, Bharti, what are you doing? But hey, copper is copper and this did the job. Getting this coast operational was quite important not just to be able to shut down the engines. but as a safety measure in case I fell off the boat, the boat would no longer tie me to myself. I found an old pickup truck anklet, the next cast was going to be a little difficult because the travel on the throttle handle was about six and three-quarters of an inch; the release on the cable coming out of the motors was only about 5/8 of an inch inches to reduce that was going to take some ingenuity, these rods here would connect to the throttle handle I made and then reduce the distance they moved , this was quite an achievement for a guy who again is not usually as complicated as this. was so involved that it could probably justify its own video, but I'm just giving you the highlights here, like this clamp I made to hold the cables inside this box, these long, rigid pieces here would transfer to the flexible cables that would go with the rest.

From the distance to the motors, some of it was handmade, like the cable sleeve and the bike cable, all of which I purchased separately. There's actually quite a bit of behind-the-scenes stuff like this that was necessary to make this whole contraption work. To hide all the stuff I used the space inside the seat and it gave it a really clean look. You can see the shift handles, the levers and the housing where the levers have a second fulcrum where the throat shifts 5/8 of an inch through the cable system, those cables I then ran through the boat using this little fish tape here and that will come back towards the motors and start to look a lot like spaghetti there, but at least it was working so far putting all that in the foam backing was also very important.

I didn't want to lose any of the float in case the worst happened next. You can see these disconnections. These are the kill switches and I also had to figure out a way to disconnect the throttle linkage so I could put the engines on one at a time. Those crimpers really came in handy mom, thanks for some charging ties kept the cable casings from moving. It seemed like it was going to work. I must say it was pretty good. smart, I was pretty proud of myself, you can see I'm making a new handle that joins the motors, something a little sturdier and something that wouldn't flex as much with the throttle and shift linkage together, it was time to make this looks good and would be close to being finished.

One of the things I wanted to do is make sure there is foam everywhere. Put this all back to promise there was foam at first, which is good, but that was a hotspot. So I could throw foam down here. It was going to have a lot of vibration in there if I didn't moisten it with some foam. These were also going to be drainage points so that water entering the boat would find its way into the hole. which is what I want. He threw a lot of foam into all those holes, not to make it waterproof, but to add flotation and make this boat a little more solid.

All the little spaces that didn't have regular wine-colored Styrofoam got expanding foam. The projects are really meant to be fun, but I also take them very seriously. Playing in water can't be a joke, okay, it looks good, let's close it. The next thing I made was a box to cover the cables where they come in and out. boat, this was quite a challenge to get everything held firmly without interfering with the cables. I even had to make a specific wrench to hold the nighlok nuts that were behind it, it worked well and looked great, we're starting to get there.

It's partly due to the fact that I have a King Star board lying around, which is the material that is wonderful to build with, and the manufacturers of that material actually sent me a gift to see how cool it is that this is a core King color. and you can see there are multiple layers and you can get this in different thicknesses and then you can mill off the top layer and it leaves a different color behind, it's great for signage and for projects like this, okay, it looks great, oh my gosh, yeah , the folks at King Plastics found out I was building something pretty crazy and they very kindly sent me these, oh man, that really gets things going, let's finish building this.

Many thanks to King Plastics for connecting me that way and of course to Pelican for making this boat. and constantly giving me opportunities to play around here, I'm taking something from mr. Plastic I cut out of the seat and gave some accessories to the company that makes all these boats I play with. This was also going to make the top of the center console look quite sharp. Underneath was a drainage hole and that is where I was going to make all the water inside the hole come back out, but I would do it without using gravity.

I would do this by using a bilge pump first. I needed a DIY through the hole now, if I had to face a wave or something. I could get all that water out pretty quickly. These boats are called Pelican's Intruder 12, but I call this particular one the Intruder 12 X 3. It's always fun to add your own little personal touches to a boat and have ways to capture. It's on camera, folks, since Scottie helped make that happen. I just had to fight to get this stupid or lock out. I didn't think I'd need them more. I might need a place to store my lures since I'm probably going to be gone.

To someday fish from this boat, one of the last things I did was create a place to put a battery that would be used to run the bilge pump and this is the switch I would use to turn it on, beautiful oh yeah. gas, it's nice to have a place for a little extra gas and you know what I really couldn't believe it, but this boat, this build is finally over, well, I think it's time to put this thing out on the water. I removed the motors and then I slid the boat into the water, the boat now weighed 244 pounds so it was pretty much all I could do to get that thing down into the water, but it was doable.

I put the motors in one at a time and then I hooked up all the linkages and It was time to play and have fun, okay the steering seems to work and now just the shifter, okay let's put this forward you know guys I gotta tell you that this boat is a lot of fun and I understand that it is not practical, I want to say three. engines three five horsepower engines we're only going to reach a certain amount of speed I could probably go faster with only 115 horsepower but practicality isn't really what this project is about this project is about what I do so often in the life which is listening to my heart instead of my brain I've done it many times I mean moving on to a ship starting in business doing a lot of things that sometimes don't seem like the best idea but it's something I really want to do, something I I have to do this project, it was definitely one of them and I appreciate you guys coming out and seeing me, so you never know when I'll do something stupid like this again.

Thanks to everyone who subscribed. I really appreciate it and if you can. Share this video it will help me pay for all these engines because who is it going to cost me this temporary obsession I'll see you later