I worked in Thailand in the 70's and 80's and enjoyed watching the longtail boats both in southern Thailand and where I lived near Nong Khai in the north on the Mekong River. As of last year I have a kit on a 15' Jon boat and use it for fishing and hunting in protected locales...glad they finally showed up on this side of the world.

I'm wondering why I am not seeing big block home built longtails like over there?

Anyone have links to people who have done so both on and off this forum?

They are impressive! I'd like to see more hull designs specifically for LT's.

We play with some bigblock longtails. I think a big difference is in my area there are a shitload of stumps. Those big creative motors over there look Awsome but I wouldn't want to smack a stump with one. Catching a surprise stump with any longtail is a major eye opener. I would love to drive one of those turbo diesel ones just for the rush. I would be terrified of hitting something with it tho. Love/ hate relationship

...I live near a giant river system (marshes and lakes included) and want to put a big block longtail on an 18' deep-v hull (Lund SSV) that I have. The outboard I have on it is rather old and needs replacing and is limited in marsh use (no stumps in this system). Anyway, you can drive 100 miles here and not see a person.

I have rebuilt a VW 50 hp diesel complete with a water cooled exhaust manifold and want to put a longtail on it, so if anyone has any experience doing this I'd appreciate some advice. So far all I have are memories of the Thai boats and a couple of sets of plans that I have purchased for smaller builds. There used to be a detailed video of building/welding a MaD Mud Motor on Youtube but that is gone I guess.

Any links or folks who have done this and are willing to talk would be very helpful to me over this coming winter.

Chat with arlon at backwater. He might have some good insight to help.

#CFFITR
#TheGhostBoat
#whoneedsphysicsihaveamudmotor