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    Trolling motor on an RL 24
    Just thought I would report back my experience with installing a trolling motor on an RL24. Having not liked the long shaft Suzuki in the engine well, I finally got around to taking the plunge to install a trolling motor. Ebay had a unit that is rated for 86 lbs thrust, and requires 24 volts to operate. Cost is 175 bucks. I will say this has probably been the best change/modification I have done to the boat so far. I just spent a week out on Carlyle Reservoir, which is a 26,000 acrea shallow lake. We had two days of miserably hot humid weather and no wind. Being able to cruise along quietly under electric allows one nearly the same sensation as sailing in moderate winds. I'm running two 175 minute reserve capacity batteries. They are up front along with the standard systems battery. My standard systems battery is getting a touch weak, so I decided to keep them separate, so the batteries running the trolling motor would not impact the systems or vice-versa. I'm running 8 ga to the rear of the boat, which seems to be OK. It could be heavier, but I ran out of space in the conduit. The boat seems to top out at about 4 knots, but I was also overloaded with 6 adults on board. That and my boat seems slow anyway, compared to the reports here. I didn't get much in the way of waves to test it, the most wind we had all week, was probably 15 to 20. I would compare the motor to about a 3HP gas, although I don't know that my 4 HP gas is much faster. Changing direction from reverse to forward is OK, and it does seem to respond to the low speed torque. The gas engine seemed to just spin the prop really fast, but yet not change the direction of the boat much.

    Not sure how it would do in Lake Michigan, or out on the ocean, but for any inland lake, I would suggest it is more than adequate. Basically I've got 400 bucks tide up in the system, which is way cheaper than a good outboard. My initial impression is that for an inland lake, electric is the way to go.

    The ease of control to get in and out of the bay area, and docking can't be beat.
    daveinet3-Aug-2015    Edit    Delete 
    Re: Trolling motor on an RL 24
    Some additional information that might be useful. On Torqeedo website, they compare their motors to the equivalent gas outboards.
    The list is as follows:
    2 HP = 33lbs thrust 180 watts
    3 HP = 68lbs thrust 480 watts
    6 HP = 121lbs thrust 1020 watts
    10 HP = 214lbs thrust 2040 watts
    Daveinet4-Aug-2015    Edit    Delete 

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