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 boats there you can see the truck pulling up it wasn't a full truck but there were a bunch of boats in there I was a happy guy the first load I pulled out myself and it was a bunch of touring kayaks [Music] but that's not what this video was about happy to have some new boats you know I got plans for these things this one in particular I had my eye on the first thing to do of course was to put it in the water I put the old trusty five horse on it and then I slipped it in the water for its first test I already had an idea as to what I wanted to do first I had to see how it performed [Music] [Applause] [Music] I was pleasantly surprised at the way this load handled skipped along the water pretty cool I was just wondering though what if I had more than one of those it was time to test the theory to see whether or not this book could actually handle that in order to do it I needed a surrogate motor both of these 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 this boat was handling it great it had no issue with all that weight in the back [Applause] [Music] mmm-hmm wheels are really turning now this was time for me to commit to an idea that would make this phone call a lot faster well my first step was to take the boat and put it up on the operating table yes sir this is gonna be a lot of work [Music] the first thing I got around to was repurposing the pallet that the boats came on [Music] next thing to do was to draw up some plans I had an idea of the additional flotation I would need and it started back here at the transom what I had first perceived as a flat back on this boat turned out to have a lot of shape with a considerable amount of doing I got a piece of wood to fit nice and snug and I screwed it through the existing transom which had a big piece of wood in it then I proceeded to do it all over again [Music] this time I had to drill through the base of the boom with those two pieces attached I just made a little side pieces which was considerably easier although I can't just have it easy I had to mimic the shape of the boat I mean there's no reason it can't look good so out came the old trusty jigsaw oh maybe not such that's teak my goodness add a scroll saw to get the job done he's really pushing the limits of that thing though but it worked now it's starting to look like something now the job was to make it a little bit thicker sure is nice to have a wood stache laying around [Music] frame was almost done a little flimsy but I had plans to stiffen it up this bamboo fencing that I had laying around worked nicely actually it was just gonna be a support what was gonna go on top of it but before I got to that I needed to cut some holes in this boat [Applause] [Music] as I suspected there was nothing in the back of this boat and it was definitely going to need to get stiffened up speaking of which that box that I built was going to need some more support besides what was just in the transom holes in the sides would eventually get bolts in them in places where I couldn't reach with a drill a red-hot allen wrench seemed to work this was all kind of new territory so even though this sounds like a how 250 go I was kind of learning as I went with the rest of the supports on the back of this box it was time to really stiffen it up I knew this was gonna make it strong somewhat waterproof and it was gonna make it look nice a man it really wasn't looking forward to it fiberglass is itchy and the chemicals are gross huh and it certainly is messy but it had to be done now that's starting to look a lot nicer and now it's time to make sure this thing was gonna float this two-part foam is meant for exactly that to add buoyancy and to make it so that if any water got in there it wouldn't get real heavy and sink the boat I try to do small increments and do it in a very scientific way instead of just have it explode everywhere what we have here is a foam chemical process in which two parts expand to 16 times their volume it is made of starstuff it is composed of billions of cells and this is we should make our boat float obviously lately I had been watching a little bit of Carl Sagan's old show the cosmos that was wearing off on me this project was pretty epic not as epic as you know discovering the cosmos but I was enjoying myself nonetheless and it was about time to really commit and glue this thing to the back of the boat this entire thing weighed about 35 pounds but I figured it was gonna add about a hundred and twenty pounds of extra flotation to the boat that's just the footprint on the outside coastguard reads these boats however on how much phone they have inside so after this thing was really screwed down tight to the back of the boat I figured I'd add a little more of that coastguard flotation to the inside which essentially only means that if water ever got inside the boat the thing wouldn't go to the bottom and it would continue to float a little bit even if it were swamped that was the plan at least to implement the plan it took a lot of cups and a lot of rounds of mixing foam together okay hopefully this boat now has sufficient flotation for what I'm about to do to it it's certainly a lot stiffer I'm gonna add a little more foam in here though and really make the back of this indestructible these pieces of composite board which I have laying around to make good covers to fill those holes that I had made earlier the name of that is King starboard I'll talk more about that later meantime time for foam now with those voids here filled with foam this it's solid as a rock compared to that which is soft and pliable so this triangular piece acts as a gusset to support the entire back of the boat another cool thing is that nothing sticks to polyethylene so whatever I dripped will clean up really easily speaking of cleaning up it's time to cut the excess stuff that's too high another thing that needed cutting what are the seats the main reason for doing this was to salvage the plastic so that could make that back transom look nicer by using the same exact plastic that the rest of the boat was made out of my idea was to make this thing look as factory as I could some of the plastic I used had to be a different color because of the big size that I needed but I got around that by using a little spray paint [Music] the staples in this gun were meant to be outside maybe not on the water but I eventually wanted to cover them and didn't worry about them rusting really too bad here are making some gussets that are going to stiffen up that piece in the back and they would sit right on top of where those staples were I tried to hide as many of the screws as I possibly could just to keep him out of the weather someone the back would be exposed but it's okay I think this thing was starting to look pretty nice [Music] it's a good thing I had a lot of cardboard laying around and starboard of course it had a lot of weight to the back of this boat but I knew that it made up for it by adding a lot more extra flotation so after I had the back getting close it was time to think about what I was going to do for a seat and I happened to have a seat sitting over here and it was too nice to pass up I quickly got to messing around and took this thing apart - the swivel in the base set the seat down then walked over here to get some cardboard in order to start designing the center console I also dipped into my wood stash [Music] an idea was starting to develop and it was going to require some heavy-duty cutting I was really liking my new replacement jigsaw I had been using a piece of junk for so long it was nice to have a real tool to play with speaking of real these grinding discs made short work of shaping these things to fit made short work of making a mess too cutting this stuff wasn't exactly that easy though and they didn't want to be wasteful so I made a lot of templates out of cardboard this was a very quick way for me to figure out whether or not I was gonna like the shape of the center console that I was designing mm-hm feels good I also had to figure out how I was gonna make this thing work from up there so as 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 motors I would need three throttles and three shifters I wanted him to work independently so I couldn't just have a single handle he was my initial idea for three different handles it only use a single pivot point and now it was a matter of just trying to find a place for it right here would do nicely to try to stabilize this thing I thought a handle across the top yeah this was gonna tie them all together and hopefully be removable so that I could use them individually this bill started getting a little more intricate than I usually like though I don't exactly have precise tools but with some care I was able to make that work with the idea finalized to turn my attention back to the center console decided to make it permanent by designing it out of king star board instead of just plain old cardboard [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] if you guys think that this took a long time imagine me in real time it was nice to have a break when the UPS guy brought some new toys things were starting to feel very real as they hand track these things inside the warehouse and finally put my DIY sawhorse to use the idea was to figure out whether or not these things were going to fit it was going to be really tight with those tiller handles on them so the first task was to take these brand-new motors and start taking them apart I'm surprised how easily these Atilla handles came off pleasantly surprised I must say because things like the throttle cables had to be rerouted and this is something that had never done before I quickly realized I was going to need a hole here speed square made sure that the drill bit didn't go through the gas tank next I had to design a bracket that would help tie all three motors together I screwed all three of these together after I cut them out and that made sure they were also temporarily screw them to the motors and then temporarily tied all three of those together and this was actually a pretty cool moment it was neat seeing all three of them turned together meantime work went on to make the rest of the back of the boat look pretty [Music] and to get the center console working which meant installing the kill switches up front this material was too thick so I had to router it like halfway through so that I'd be able to tighten down the factory kill switches I don't know what I would do without that little dremel tool meantime there was that hole in the motors where the attila handles it were i plugged them up with you guessed it king starboard that's where i could do anything at that stuff now all the cables to measure the cables i used string or rope for line or whatever you guys call him i paid it out and taped it in place and then wrap them up to bring to the marine 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 bit like I was over my head the heck is this that is an ancient tiller cable steering wheel that is pretty cool that when they did 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 you want an honest opinion an honest mechanic a good mechanic go see market both Rock Creek so I got myself a brand-new used steering wheel and I'm doing a lot of this stuff on this boat but I wanted to defer to an expert here because the certain things you just don't want to mess around with and Mark said something to me that I thought was actually really really deep which is yeah so you trying to make steering work you really want to be careful because boats don't have brakes so you have to be able to steer clear from danger June 30th 1985 I got run over by a boat cuz the steering broke I'm kind of a poster child for why you don't mess around the steering it's one of a million reasons why I turned to mark when it comes to learning how to do things properly so Thank You Man I appreciate that came home with all the cables that I needed a steering wheel and a cup holder which was cold and instructions yeah I don't need lot structions I was glad though that I had a way to use the old transom the one that came with the boat I didn't want to just 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 might have been able to do this by myself but buying these things had to be a lot safer and it was definitely a lot quicker batting the cables however that was pretty difficult there was only a little bit of space inside the hull on the inside of this boat but just enough for me to make it work making the shifter work though that was going to require a whole bunch of little brackets fiddly work that I probably couldn't have made with wood again that wonderful composite material starboard came into play attaching the cables to the motors also required a little bit of fiddly work these brackets had to pivot also because the chipped handle doesn't just go forward and backwards the back end of the cables I just attached to the motor housing with the bolt they required little spacers but that was easy enough to make setting it up like this the cable sheath itself moved and the cable stayed put actually seeing it work was quite an achievement for me then I had to take the front end of the cable and attach it to my homemade linkage then then where the kill switches those had to be done as well I looked around for some wire to use because I'm a cheapskate and I saw this telephone wire here hanging it had been there a long time I figured nobody was using that I might have been mistaken okay babe I'll see you soon babe Bharti what are you doing but hey copper is copper and this stuff got the job done getting this coast which is operational was pretty important not only to be able to shut the motors off but as a safety precaution in case I were to fall out of the boat the boat wouldn't just keep on going to tether it to myself I found an old anklet from an SUV the next cast was going to be a little bit difficult because the throw on the throttle handle was about six and three quarters of an inch he throw on the cable coming out of the motors was only about 5/8 of an inch to reduce that was going to require a little bit of ingenuity these rods here would connect to the throttle handle that I made and then reduce the distance that they moved this was quite an achievement for a guy who's again not usually as fiddly as this it was so involved that could probably warrant its own video but here I'm just giving you the highlights like this clamp that I made to hold down the cables inside this box these long rigid pieces here would transfer into the flexible cables that would go the rest of the distance to the motors some of it was handmade like the cable sheath and the bicycle wire all of which I bought separate there's actually quite a bit of behind-the-scenes stuff like this that was necessary in order to make this whole contraption work in order to hide all the stuff I utilized to space inside the seat and it just made for a really clean look you can see the shift handles the levers and the box where the levers have a second fulcrum where the throat changes to 5/8 of an inch through the cable system those cables then I drew through the boat using this little fish tape here and that will make its way back towards the motors starting to look a lot like spaghetti back there but at least it was working so far putting all that foam back was pretty important too I didn't want to lose any of the flotation in case the worst were to happen next you can see these disconnects these are the kill switches and I also had to devise a way to disconnect the throttle linkage so that I'd be able to put the motors on one at a time those crimpers really came in handy mom thank you for that some cargo ties kept the cable sheaths from moving it seemed like it was going to do the trick I must say I was rather clever I was rather proud of myself you can see I'm making a new handle that ties the motors together something a little more stout and something that wouldn't flex as much with the throttle and the shift linkage together it was just time to make this thing look nice and that would be close to being finished one of the thing I wanted to do though is make sure that there's foam everywhere put this all back to promise up front there happened to be foam which is nice but that was an access point so I could squirt foam under here I was gonna get a lot of vibration there if I didn't dampen it with some foam these were also going to be drain points so that any water that gets in the boat would find its way inside the hole which is what I want it squirted a lot of foam inside there into all those holes not to make it waterproof but to add floatation and make this boat a little more solid all the little gaps that didn't have regular wine styrofoam got expanding foam [Applause] these projects are really meant to be fun but I also take them very seriously playing around on the water can be no joke okay looking good let's close her up [Applause] next thing that I made was a box to cover the cables where they come in and out of the boat this was quite challenging to make everything hold on tight without interfering with the cables I even had to make a wrench specific for holding on to the nighlok nuts that were behind it worked out good and it looked great well we're starting to get there it's partly due to the fact that I have King star board laying around which is what this material is it's so wonderful to build with and the manufacturers of that stuff actually sent me a gift to check this out how cool is that this is king color core and you can see there's multiple layers and you can get this in different thicknesses and then you can router out the top layer and it leaves a different color behind it's great for signage and for projects like this okay cool that looks oh my gosh yeah the the folks at King plastics heard that I was building something pretty crazy and they very kindly sent me these oh man that really sets everything off let's finish building this many thanks to King plastics for hooking me up like that and of course for Pelican for making this boat and giving me opportunities constantly to play around here I'm taking some of the mr. plastic that I cut out from the seat and given some props to the company that makes all these boats that I play with [Music] this was also going to make the top of the center console look pretty sharp underneath it all there was a drain hole and that's where I was going to make all the water inside the hole come back out but I would do it not using gravity I would do it using a bilge pump first I needed a DIY through the hole now if I were to take on a wave or something I'd be able to get all that water out rather quickly [Music] this boats called the intruder 12 by Pelican but this particular one I'm calling the intruder 12 X 3 it's always fun adding your own little personal touches to a boat and having ways to capture it on camera folks as Scottie helped make that happen I just had to wrestle out this stupid or lock I didn't think I'd be needing those or locks anymore I might need a place to keep my lures though as I'm probably going to do some fishing someday from this boat one of the last things I did was make a place to put a battery and that was going to be used to run the bilge pump and this is the switch I would use to turn it on beautiful oh yeah gasoline nice to have a place for some extra gas and you know what I couldn't really believe it but this boat this build has finally finished okay I think it's time to take this thing out on the water I took the Motors off 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 wrestle that thing down to the water but it was doable the motors I put on one at a time and then hooked all the linkage and it was time to play and have some fun okay steering seems to work and now just the shifter alright let's put this in forward [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] well you know guys I got to tell you this boat is a lot of fun and I understand that it's not practical I mean three motors three five horse motors we're only going to achieve a certain amount of speed I probably could go faster with only 115 horse but practicality is not really what this project is about this project is about what I do so often in life which is listen to my heart instead of my brain I've done that many many times I mean moving on to a boat starting in business doing a lot of things that sometimes don't seem like the best idea but something that I really want to do something that I have to do this project was definitely one of them and I appreciate you guys coming along and watching so you never know when I'm gonna do something stupid like this again thank you for everybody who has subscribed I really appreciate it and if you can share this video it's going to help me pay for all these motors because who this temporary obsession is going to cost me catch you later [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: zoffinger

Views: 7,802,117

Rating: 4.7536793 out of 5

Keywords: kayak, kayak fishing, fishing, saltwater, Florida, fish, how-to, zoffinger, Tampa, ocean, Pelican, Intruder12, bass boat

Id: RkVJBw7Vgyk

Length: 48min 9sec (2889 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 04 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/the_snook]

What's the advantage of three smaller motors over a single larger one?

[u/Sure_Ill_Ask_That]

If this is poor man, I don’t want to see how much money the rich man cost

[u/BloodyRightNostril]

Jesus that Carl Sagan impression is dead on

[u/powerful_owl]

I don’t know the first thing about boats but I watched every minute. This guy clearly knows his craft and seems humble about it. Awesome project!

[u/Poptarzan]

I was expecting that thing to just start hauling ass and then, it didn’t.

[u/infinifunny]

pretty cool - wonder if he wishes he set the seat back closer to the motors.

[u/zyzzogeton]

This is the most Florida thing I have seen in this sub.

[u/myheadhurtsalot]

This guy has a bunch of great videos of him building random boat projects in his shop, seems like a cool guy to hang out with.

[u/Wondrous_Fairy]

Total no-tool kind of guy here. One question, dusts in shops, aren't those really bad for you to inhale on a regular basis?