CAINE wrote:

John Weiss wrote:

"Rick Cortese" wrote...

Does anyone know the thrust and voltage specs for this older Minn Kota
trolling motor ?

Is it 12 volts DC And 85 lbs. output thrust ?

Unlikely. I don't know that they ever made an 85# motor in 12V. I think the
biggest one I've seen before going to 24V was around 60# thrust... AFAIK, the
biggest 12V model they make now is 55#.


M-K customer service told me this is a 1984 vintage trolling motor. He
said it's 12 volt and "about" 36 lbs. thrust. He seemed unsure because
the unit is 22 years old.

I tried it out yesterday in a 14' boat with 3 people- it drove that
thing almost like a gas engine. WOW- plenty of power. All the trolling
motors I've used before seemed like real dogs compared to this. I'm
thinking this is about 40-42 lb. thrust at least, by how it drives.

It has 5 speeds and forward/reverse.


FWIW: If anything I think the older MinnKota model numbers reflected
amps. Figure 85 amps would roughly translate to 40ish lbs of thrust.
Watts is just amps X Voltage so ~1000 Watts. 746 Watts = 1 hp so you
may have a ~1.4 hp motor.

There's a lot of other things to consider that I am ignoring like
efficiency and a 1 hp electric motor is probably equivalent to a 3 hp
gas engine. I mean your battery is supplying 1.4 hp of electricity to
the motor and it may be 40% efficient but equivalent to 3 times that of
a gas motor at that hp.

40 lbs of thrust is nothing to sneeze at anyway. I think the min
recommendation for trolling motor is something like 5 lbs thrust for
every 1,000 lbs of boat and passengers. 40 lbs in some circles would be
good'nuff for a 30' sailboat with lead keel.