DIY Trolling Motor Installation for Ascend 128T

hey what's up games brian with flint hill catfish and welcome back to another episode i'm going to be showing you and walking through my trolling motor install on my ascend 128 t so stick around we'll go through it all right so the trolling motor install i'm going to show you today it's can be done on any kayak many kayaks come prepped and ready like turn key for trolling motors this one does not a lot of the more you know cheaper kayak systems around 800 bucks you get a 2500 you know whatever nice kayak and it's gonna it's gonna have that stuff in it probably but this one does not and i had to do a few amendments to it to make it work right so anyway here's what i got going on the trolling motor that i purchased is a minn kota endura c2 is 30 pounds thrust i've got a 30 amp draw maximum draw amperage wise and it already had the transom mount here so what we did let me put this down real quick what i did i had a friend help me just got some uh some tools and some metal working gear dean lawson he's been in some of my videos anyway we mounted a plate on here that's stainless steel and it gave us an upright to mount this wood too and i screwed this 2x4 to it that allows me just to clamp this trolling motor right onto the back of it and of course you're gonna have to use silicone on both sides of these bolts and uh with the nuts on the back i use the locking aircraft nuts or fiber nuts whatever you want to call them i relocated my handle i actually put one on each side because the handle used to be right here you'll also notice that the drain plug i relocated it to the side on the back right there this drain plug used to be right about here but i put a piece of plastic on the inside screwed it uh or put adhesive on it to cover the hole from the inside of the kayak and then i siliconed over it before i put this plate down everything you put in you're going to want to silicone it with marine sealant really well and you know these things you can buy these drain plugs if you break one or if you want to install it somewhere else or the other one gets broken when you take it out but that one relocated well i just took it out of there and put it there so you'll have to relocate a few things but it's really not that big of a deal i mean i wanted two hand holes because it makes it a little easier when i'm trying to slide it up on my trailer i can just kind of grab both handles and slide it forward it just works for me so what's going on is in order to make this work i had to take the actual tiller head off all right so if you're wondering if wiring it is complicated it's really not um and i'll start with this everybody knows what this is i'm sure just used a trolling motor this is the tiller head that goes on top of the trolling motor shaft and inside of this there was a speed control that this operates you turn this for three speeds of reverse and five speeds forward the problem with the switch that's inside of here is that it shaves off power in the form of heat it uses a shunt device in it and when you're using a shunt that's what it does it shaves off the excess in the form of heat which means you're wasting battery power um when you put in a pulse width modulator or pwn in place of this you do away with this mechanism and you have a potentiometer which is a small dial and i'll show you that later what i put in small dial and a three-way switch on reverse forward and then you have a dial that you can turn up to 100 or zero and that'll decide or will uh determine how fast your prop is turning um it's much more efficient because it only draws the amperage per how far you turn that dial if that makes sense all right so replacing the head on or the tiller head rather on that uh trolling motor i'm using this guy right here now i put it in this box but that is a pulse width modulator what you got going on in here is a positive and a negative that are going to the motor and a positive and a negative that are going to the battery and then your control wiring is right here which comes up to the switch the center position is off you have a reverse and a forward here and that's all those are i put it inside this waterproof little like wannabe pelican box from uh academy or something it it works and i just kind of put my own controls in there because i could tell what i was doing i have some bungees where it straps in right here and it's right by my side when i'm driving i can just sit here and i can turn this guy and i can bring it up however fast i want or slow it down if i'm dragging baits to you know just barely a crawl and i'll show you the operation on that in a bit when we get through the other pieces here so you got no steering when you take that tiller head off right well let me show you what i did and this isn't my idea original i got this off of youtube from watching several different videos and i kind of made it like i wanted to make it and what i felt worked good so check it out all right so when you take this tiller head off there's going to be four wires coming out of there you only want the black and the red that's your positive and your negative on the top here i just took a one inch 90 degree pvc connector spray painted it black and a one inch this is an electrical what they call a uh a seal tight or liquid connector it's a 90 degree it's plastic i screwed it into there and this is just a piece of weatherproof um weatherproof cable that i had laying around and as long as it's like uf cable is what it needs to be rated um that's made for direct burial outside and you just get a short piece you probably talk to somebody in construction they can get it for you if you didn't want to go buy some um so what i had to do with this was i just used the black and the red inside of this just so i didn't even have a ground so two wires for steering i put a piece of all thread this collar here determines how far down this guy will go so i'm gonna lower it a little here all right she lives right there you can see what's going on there it's just below my keel and that's plenty if you're if you're just below the keel i mean most people say that works good i'm not a pro but it seems to work pretty good for me um and then i lock this collar set screw down enough where i can still turn it without having to struggle i took a piece of all thread this used to have one of these guys in it i took that out and ran a piece a quarter inch all thread to here about midway to these rod couplings then i put this nut on the back of it a rod coupling then another nut with a threaded quarter inch eyelet and i just locked it until i got the angle that i needed these to turn where i like the way that they hung with the carabiners that allows me to pull from my foot pedals with these cords on here and steer my trolling motor so with the carabiners on i just i i haven't really got this you know exactly like i want it yet but i kind of just tied a knot on on each one of them that isn't going to go anywhere from there i come down and i have a hearken pulley right here if you can see that it's the same kind of pulley you would use on an anchor trolley that gives me the angle i wanted coming down and it pulls right through that exactly like i wanted it to it's a nice angle and it makes for smoother pulling when it's rotting on that pulley so if you follow from this green carabiner clipped on this eyelet goes down through the pulley comes all the way up front and i basically tied it onto my foot pedal and i did the same on this side the other cable's tied onto my foot pedal when i push on one foot pedal it turns push on the other foot pedal turns the other direction so my foot pedals end up being my steering so a quick recap on everything we just talked about everything you get ready to do on each step that i just told you about there and every step i'm going to tell you from here on out could be slightly different depending on your kayak layout so make sure you dry fit everything first i get the clear gorilla tape it's double-sided tape and it's like a gel gel sticky tape and it's double-sided and you can put it on anything that you need to attach to your kayak to keep you from having to drill holes in your kayak before you're sure of placement so i use that for everything and i'll stick it on there for a drop it see if the angle is right with whatever i'm doing or a rod holder or whatever i'll use that sticky back tape to see if i like where it's at before i actually put a hole in my kayak to secure something to it so just a little tip to keep you from messing your kayak up because that's not fun i had to make a significant modification to the center hatch by raising it to make more room for the battery because it just wasn't tall enough to have the battery sit up right in there some batteries you can lay down on your side some you can't mine you can't do that with so i had to keep it upright or it would leak fluid and that's not a good thing so let me walk you through that real quick all right so what i had to do this hatch here used to look exactly like this one as you can see this has a factory lip on it and that flange sits right on top of it the black flange sits right on top of that raised flange when you come up front here you'll see i've added this white piece of material it isn't beautiful but honestly i didn't really care um it's like a piece of cutting board thick piece of nylon and i just took this flange this plate off the hatch off and i siliconed this white piece down i cut it out the size i needed and i cut a hole out of the middle of that cutting board siliconed it down screwed it down did all the stuff that needed to happen to get that in place that helped me raise this so there are options if you don't want to put your battery on the outside i just didn't want anything else on the deck of my kayak you know i mean as you guys know in any boat you just run out of space quick and if i can keep it inside it's fine and it seems to ride well in this 13 foot kayak it rides perfect there 43 pound battery my big butt there and then trolling motor off the back it just it seems to balance really well looks good in the water and it's it's moving just like i wanted to so i'm happy with that and it doesn't leak that's good check out this drawing on the whiteboard i'm going to walk you through it real quick and i think this might help you some when you go to actually wire the kayak so you have a motor pwm and the battery you also have a positive and a negative wire from the pwm to the motor and from the pwm to the battery and you also have terminals one two and three which are your switch for reverse forward and off you also need a marine grade 30 amp inline fuse on the positive wire between the battery and the pwm all right so one thing not to forget if you're gonna put a trolling motor on a kayak you don't have to register the trolling motor or any motor if it's below five horsepower if i remember correctly but with a trolling motor you do have to register your kayak so you need to go through dnr in whatever state you're in and make sure you know what they're requiring um it's not that much money really it's just uh it's just a formality you have to go through so they can trace your boat if it's stolen or make sure you haven't stolen somebody else's stuff so anyway um that's that's something you're gonna have to do to be legal with this i'm still waiting on my numbers to come in but i have the temporary numbers already they actually you can print them off and you can use that until your real numbers come in so just something to think about got to get that done so i'm going to tell you a hands down i i was a little sketch about putting this trolling motor on here because it was kind of an investment between the battery the trolling motor and just you know all the work i had to do to it was a lot of work but i want to tell you for me personally it was a great investment i'm super happy with it um when i'm going upstream to fish places that are pretty hard to get to when i'm sticking it with a paddle um you know i'm not out of breath i'm not dying i mean i'm like old man paddling when i'm trying to go upstream for you know a quarter of a mile and i'm i'm having to huff it with a paddle so it just makes it so much easier getting to places that are hard to get to the other thing as many of you know that fishing boats with trolling motors like when you have to stop and fish and stay in one location man you can slow that thing down when you're in current and almost sit still and then you can fish that bank get bait fish if you need little cast net whatever if you're kayak's stable enough to do that but it is super helpful um just being able to fish for bait and different things like that along the way and just helps you get where you need to be and not have to try to do all of that stuff fishing with a paddle in your hand it just you start to run out of hands man um so i love it for that reason the other reason i love it is like on the lake or even on the river i can drag baits um and you know just you name it the way you would want to fish um the trolling motor can help you do that a ton and those of you that's fished with trolling motors for years you know this i haven't all i know is i thoroughly enjoy it i highly recommend it so it's it's a great investment in my opinion all right gang well that's a wrap i hope this video was helpful i just wanted to put together some pieces that maybe if you were on the fence about getting a trolling motor this might give you some of the incentive or the information that you needed to go ahead and go for it in my opinion it's very worth the investment of money and time to do the work uh installing it so anyway this is brian flinthill catfishing and don't forget to like subscribe and share and i'll catch you on the next one you

Channel: Flint Hill Catfishing

Views: 90,024

Keywords: Ascend 128T modifications, DIY trolling motor for kayaks, Kayak trolling motor installs, how to install trolling motor on a fishing kayak, Ascend Review of 128T Fishing kayak

Id: SjlvGDHUs6A

Length: 15min 6sec (906 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 11 2020