Outboard Motor Brackets

Rich Gort (rich@gorts.com)
Sat, 19 Jun 1999 21:34:22 -0700 (PDT)


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West Wight Potter Website at URL
http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
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I have one of the early P19's and wanted to upgrade the outboard motor
bracket. The original was a fiberglass one, non adjustable, and I lusted
over those nice Garelick adjustable ones I kept seeing at West Marine.

I finally bought a model 71038 and pondered over a way to mount it without
making major modifications to the boat itself. Ideally, I wanted to use
the existing transom holes, but there was no way they would line up. I
finally came up with an idea that may be of interest to others who want to
make a similar change.

The original mounting used 6 holes, 3 on each side about 12" wide and 9"
high. The new backet's mounting holes were much closer, both withwise and
lengthwise. I bought some 3/8" aluminum plate and cut 3 pieces, one large
enough to cover the whole area (about 13 1/2" wide x 12" high) and two
about 2" wide and 12" high. I mounted the narrow strips over the original
holes and the large piece over the strips. I had drilled the center of
the large piece to fit the new bracket, and placed four 1" SS bolts thru
it (head toward the transom) before mounting. The 3/8" spacing between
the plate and the transom due to the strips allowed me to use an open end
wrench to hold the bolt heads while mounting the bracket itself. It
turned out pretty nice, so I thought I'd share it with the group. The
concept should work for any of the many mounts that have been used on our
boats as long as the original mounting holes are wider than the ones on
the newer adjustable mounts. I must admit that I did make a slight
modification to the boat, I enlarged the original holes from 1/4" to 5/16"
just because it seemed like a good idea. I can still remount the original
bracket if I ever wanted to by enlarging its holes to 5/16".

It's much harder to explain than it really is, so I put together a few
pictures (probably worth much more than 1000 of my words) on
http://www.gorts.com/potter.

Check it out if you have any interest.

Rich Gort
WWP19 #202 SAYOKO
Lake Stevens, WA
Sailing Northern Puget Sound and North Cascades Mountain Lakes