Working on reducing some of my torque today. Did some tweaking on the bottom tab of my skeg, with just a little bit of improvement. At the suggestion of a fellow MMT member, I turned my attention to the trim pin to see if that helped. It is set it the very bottom hole. I say it "IS" set there because you cant get it out! After removing the nuts from each end, you can see the remnant of some kind of caulking around the threads and inside the locator hole (I suspect 5200). I put a 2x4 against the tip of the rod and beat the crap out of it. Dang thing wont budge.

Why on earth would anyone do something so frigging stupid?!

Anyway, took a drive to my local THD, bought a 12" piece 3/8 allthread and a 6" piece of 1/2" pipe nipple and made another adjustment pin. The 1/2" nipple acts as a sleeve to protect the allthread. Added some washers at each end of the nipple to take up the extra space.

Dont know why I'm so surprised to find this newest kink in my motor's setup, after everything else I've found cobbled up on it.

Get a grade 8 bolt. And use that for your running pin. That all thread will bend and it will be difficult to remove.
Leave the one in the bottom hole. You want that one for when you're stuck.

I thought about that after the install. Luckily I'm in one of three Depot's every week, so I'll grab an 8" 3/8 bolt and replace it soon. Ran the boat this evening to see if I could get it dialed in and found the center hole to be the best location. Tweaked the skeg a bit too. Still have a little torque, but not near as bad. It was just me, so next is to put some weight in it and see how that effects the handling. Forgot to bring the GPS, but saw the best performance so far. WOT was turning 4150 rpm's, good speed and no porpoising.

Make sure it's a grade 8 bolt. It's harder than a standard bolt and will not bend like a typical bolt frombtge hardware store.

I've sent an e-mail to Gatortail. Hopefully they have a replacement part and can sell me one. Just gonna have to go easy till I can get it fixed correctly.

I run one of these



You can get em off eBay all day any day or go down to your local west marine or boat dealers parts counter with the part #s in that pic and they might have one on the shelf.

Then you can leave that bolt in the bottom hole for 4x4 and move the pin up or down as needed.

Is it bad if your really stuck and just pull the bolt out all together? No I have not done that was just curious.

Don't think I'll have to worry about that scenario. As I said earlier, that pin isn't going anywhere! I put a 2x4 on the end of the stud and beat on it with a 3# sledge hammer. The sucker didn't budge. Just buried up in the board. A new pin installed in the upper hole has taken its place for normal running. If I need bulldog, that pin is still there to protect the transom. Still can't wrap my head around why you would do that.....just dumb.