Lifetime Tamarack Kayak Modifications

[Music] hey everybody i wanted to take you on what seems to be the uh obligatory youtube tour of my lifetime time rack kayak and the modifications that i made to it i guess we'll start back here well first let me give you a little history on this i ordered this from walmart.com uh the first of december of last year and the first one they sent me arrived damaged so i called walmart customer service and they were real nice everybody spoke to was real pleasant and they assured me that they'd get it taken care of well long story short i got the replacement uh almost a month to the day after i first ordered it but uh after about uh five phone calls uh we finally got it done and they were nice enough to give me a uh 20 refund which uh brought my final cost on it down to about 220 but that was uh over the course of december so uh i wasn't really going to go anywhere during december and january so that was fine with me um i guess we'll start back here with uh my uh crate great that everybody has to add uh you can see i've got clean room in here for my backpack with other tackle boxes i've got my tackle box here got the anchor over here in a piece of pvc um the crate is held on with uh this paracord with the hooks on it that have got a cam lock on it and i just slip those in the handle tighten it up and that's nice and snug get ready take it off just release the cam lock and it comes off easy enough as you can see i added these rod holders uh there's one on each side just to cut pvc just like everybody else and put those on there you can see that with the rod holder that was that came with the boat and the way this is situated i can get two rods in there easy enough and they're easy to get to and get out uh let me take this off so i can show you what i did to the crate [Music] hope i don't step on that rod while i'm doing this [Music] the crate and hold the front on with the bungee cord that just keeps it tightened a little bit but what i did on the crate was um because of this hatch back here which is absolutely worthless uh i cut the bottom off of my crate and then repositioned it about an inch and a half higher up and held it in place with the zip ties one of the very first things excuse me one of the very first things i did was add these uh outriggers uh and the reason for that my wife and i bought a couple of kayaks just for puttering around in and before we took them out i decided i might ought to get one in the pool and practice getting in and out of it and i was uh doing real well and just about the time i was ready to pat myself on the back i went to get in it and it slipped out from under me flipped over and then i got thinking well i bet they don't have any steps in the lake so i better figure out how to get in and out of this thing in case it tips over so i got on youtube and i looked at videos of how to get back in your kayak the only problem was everybody that was doing these videos was under 35 years old and weighed less than 150 pounds so after struggling for about an hour in the pool i was sweating and i realized that it just wasn't going to happen for me i'm about 225 pounds so this was my first priority was to add these outriggers i did it with just pvc and um boat bumpers i think these were 11 bucks a piece at uh academy and then to make it so that i could transport it in my truck i put these clevis pins on here those just come out the whole thing pops right off one thing that did pose a bit of a problem is figuring out how to get this cross piece mounted securely on here because one of the problems is you may not can tell it from the video but there's an angle from here to here so it angles down that way and i had to figure out some way to to get it securely held on there so what i did was i took some pvc pipe and split it heated it up flattened it out and then heated again and i was able to mold it so that it fit this angle and this angle just exactly right it's held in with four screws on each side each one of them has got marine adhesive in it so these things are on there pretty tight over here this was a afterthought came much later i had ordered a a cheap package of action cam accessories and it came with this cheap little selfie stick but i noticed that it was threaded on the end with the quarter twenty thread so i made this bracket again out of pvc and so i'm able to move that around like that it'll swivel in whatever direction i want the camera to go uh it comes up [Music] and extends it'll go up about i don't know maybe four or five feet on the seat this was an old tool pouch that i hadn't used in probably 20 years so i just bungee corded it onto the back of the seat keep my slab checker crappie bites gatorade whatever in there and when i'm traveling this just flips over and the seat folds down like that and what i did here it comes with the seat that comes with it has this latch on it and uh the seat goes on there uh if you get one the first thing you need to do is look for a way to change the seat out there's no way that i could last more than a couple hours in the seat that's in there but the back comes off and what i did was i built this bracket again out of pvc heat it up flatten it out bend it like i wanted it uh where it fits in down here the pvc is just a little bit too big so i put that on my lathe and shaved off about 20 thousandths of an inch after i'd gone to all the trouble of setting my lathe up and getting that done i figured out i could have done the same thing with a strip of 60 grit sandpaper in about half the time i originally had it with just these whole hose clamps holding it on but it still had a tendency to shift back and forth so ultimately i put these screws i don't know if you can see them in there and that stopped that completely uh it's uh it's in there pretty solid now and uh with me shifting around it doesn't move at all and it'll still lock in place with that snap there on the bottom to brace it i took a piece of uh tubing that i had laying around and i don't know if i can show you this but hope that shows up i just drilled a hole in there drilled all the way through the the bracket on the seat and then screwed that on and cinched it down and again that's pretty solid like it is what i found on the seat was this is just wrapped around here and held on by this webbing here uh but the seat had a tendency to all slide forward as i'm shifting around in the in the seat and all of this was moving toward the front here so i just took this paracord and tied it on there to kind of anchor it in place you can see how it's shifted from the center here over to here and believe me there's no way to get that scooted back over there when you're not sitting in it it's pretty darn tight but this paracord seems to be holding it just fine so that's working for me got my waterproof foam bag here on a coiled cord that or lanyard that i made these again i saw it on youtube and that's where i got the idea from and these things are really really handy i have no fear of dropping my phone in the water and with it in this bag it's not going to get wet if i do and the nice part about it is inside this bag you it still has all the functions you can still do everything you could with it out of the bag i there's a couple of kayak apps that i that i use and then i can also use it if one of my call or if i want to send a text message or read a text message everything works just fine in the bag uh moving forward we've got these hatches here another hatch in the front here you've probably seen on other videos that this is hollow all the way through so you can either get a waterproof bag to put stuff in there but what i did was i took these waterproof boxes that i got at walmart i forget they're five six bucks a piece um put some velcro on the bottom of it and then velcro on the bottom of the boat i've got one for wallet keys such as that and then i've got this one that stays in there all the time that's got uh emergency horn uh leatherman tool reading glasses for threading line through eyelets [Music] and that all just sticks right down in there and with the velcro it stays in place very well uh another tool pouch over there for my pliers and scissors again held on with a coil lanyard there i've got a lanyard on my paddle actually uh with this on here and the pontoons in place i can just throw this off the side and lean it on the arm of the outrigger and do whatever i need to do and then reach back and get it it just floats right there beside me all the time on this uh hatch right here i put a piece of velcro on there and a piece of velcro on the bottom of the tackle box that way i can slap it down on there and it's not going to tip over and dump everything out in the boat or worse in the lake when all the uh reviews of the turmeric that i've seen on youtube everybody calls that a cup holder that is not really a cup holder i'm going to show you what it's for that's where you keep all your jigs and lures and whatever else to keep it from sliding around the boat and keep them having to dig it out of the tackle box every time you get ready to change the lure uh the drink holder as far as i'm concerned is this a little concave spot right here just kidding i probably was originally designed to be a cup holder but uh i found it to be more useful that way i did the same thing everybody else has done on the scrupper plugs got the the foam practice golf balls um just uh poked a hole in it threaded some paracord through it tied a couple of knots on the bottom and that makes it easy to get them in and out on the side here i mounted the yak attack anchor trolley um [Music] one thing i will say is uh you can see now i've got some slack in there believe me you want that because when i first put it on i had it pretty tight and after this thing saw water and sun about eight or ten times this shrunk up and it was so tight that i could barely move it so you might want to leave a little extra if you decide to put one of these on there the nice thing about it is they give you enough paracord to put an anchor trolley on a destroyer if you wanted to so i had plenty left over to redo the job this was the uh rod holder that originally came with it but uh i made some modifications to it so that uh i can mount my fish finder on it um see if i can show you here the uh this one just comes off uh i can move it up and remove the transducer up and down drop it in the water just like that if i need to get it out of the way i can raise it up and then pick the whole thing up and move it over uh see if i can get this off so i can show you how this is mounted again uh boy i'm glad i learned how to uh flatten pvc and make sheets out of it because it's been invaluable the different things that i've been able to come up with on it but this piece that you see right here is uh just a piece of pvc that i cut out uh and mounted on the fish finder itself these uh screws here look like overkill i know but the only reason i chose that size was because there happened to be a hole there already that that screw fit perfectly into and then once i had this piece on here i just mounted the mounting bracket onto that and then the mount for the fish finder just snaps in there fish finder smacks on and i can move it however i want swivels back and forth and over here i again have the same accessory pack for the gopro they had a bicycle handlebar mount for your action camera so i've got camera mounted on here uh this piece here all it does is when i get ready to move the camera in a different direction i can just turn that and it cinches it down tight where it's not going to move and for the transducer let me take this off and i'll show you what i did i didn't glue this in here so i can put that in and take it out i can coil my cord up and pack it away uh on here this is just a pvc drilled hole through it mounted the transducer on there and uh that slips right in there it's nice and tight it's not gonna go anywhere i can move the transducer however i want keep this part here tied up with a table strap that's just to keep debris and stuff from getting caught up in there and hung up for the battery i looked at probably a 100 youtube videos and everybody showed mounting it inside the hole but i didn't want anything that permanent so what i did again another one of these uh waterproof boxes that you got at home depot i don't remember 10 15 or something like that and i've got the battery inside here with some foam to hold in place so it's not shifting around to keep it relatively waterproof i don't know if you can see that but i took my dremel tool and a uh oh it's a rotary tool that uh and just cut a little uh a little circle out of there the cord fits in there just to right i was careful that when i was cutting it out on this side not to damage this rubber seal around here and with this closed and locked it is 99.9 percent waterproof if uh i'm if i'm in a situation where i'm having to worry about water getting into this box i've got more things to worry about than a 20 battery and this is uh when i got it in the back of the truck and there's about four feet of it hanging out the back uh i don't want anybody running into me so i'll put this flag on here and it just stays there all the time so when i get ready to take it out of the water and pack everything up all i have to do is pull it out of here wind all the cord up take my fish finder off unplug everything and that all packs up into a nice neat little bag and i can transport all of that in the in the bag when i get ready to unload and take everything out this comes off and there's a certain way that it goes on a certain way it comes off and that's it so this whole thing comes off too everything packs up nice and neat once you get it alive this just cools back up i use the uh strap tie to hold all that together that goes into the bag and the fish finder that's in there and i'm ready to go on the battery box i'm going to get ready to go this all coils up nice and neat fits inside the box there lock it up and we're ready to go so that's uh pretty much my setup uh i realize uh there's probably some stuff that i didn't cover very well and uh some of it you may not be able to see very well so if you've got any questions or you want me to go into a little more in-depth like some explanation explanation of any of this just drop me a note in the comments i appreciate you watching and i hope you found some of this useful have a good one

Channel: don mcgee

Views: 65,622

Keywords: kayak, kayak modifications, kayak fish finder, kayak outriggers, lifetime tamarack

Id: _I6-pSipLKE

Length: 26min 31sec (1591 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 04 2021