My new jon boat, step by step...

[dsuden]

First, thanks to everybody who has helped me figure out the best configuration for the river I live on. I searched around a lot and ultimately settled on a Mirrocraft MV 448 with no center seat. It's 14' long, 48" base, 70" beam. It was made, I think, the last year Mirrocraft made jons, in 2009, and had been sitting on the lot at the boat dealer all this time, so they were ready to deal. Got a good price on it. It was between this one and an Alumacraft 1648. Both were very close in size and shape except that the MV 1648 had a really long stretch between the bench and the casting deck, more than I felt I needed.

The boat is bare bones, so I'll need to wire it up, add in lights, bilge pump, and trolling motor receptacle. Should be a good learning experience.

Between the boat, trailer, and trolling motor (Minn Kota V2 bow-mount 55 lb thrust), and quick-release plate, it was an expensive first day! One major thing to go. I found a good price locally on a Nissan 9.8 HP 4-stroke that I ordered and should be here next week. What remains is to pick up lights, bilge pump, receptacle, and wire, and probably a harness so the wires make a neat journey from the front to the back of the boat. There's room in a gap along the ribs, so placing it should be easy. I also need to get one of those risers so the trolling motor clears the lip along the front of the bow.

As I go along, I'll keep a little photo journal here. Wish me luck!

 

[cva34]

Looks great ,so your off and running (working on)...Sounds like ya got a plan ...Should be nice rig.Have fun /best of luck/catch fish...cva34

 

[dsuden]

Day two:

Today I spent some time looking up and ordering some bits and pieces I'll need:

- Bow and stern lights
- Gang switch plate with three switches for bow light, stern light, and bilge
- Bilge pump and hose kit
- rubber mounting clips for stowing the stern light pole
- Receptacle and plug for trolling motor
- Oops, forgot to order a riser for the bow-mount trolling motor. Will do that tonight I think.

Ordered it all from Amazon, which turned out to be quite a bit cheaper than Fleet Farm.

I also put half-down on the 9.8 Nissan 4-stroke I ordered from a local dealer. He thinks it'll be here next week. So my plan is to try and have as much of the wiring and installing done as possible by the time the motor arrives. If I time things out right, I'll be able to pull the rigged-up jon down and have him put the motor right on it, then take it home and launch it the same day.

I invited my old radio engineer friend over for supper tonight, and asked him for some advice on wiring the boat. He confirmed my ideas and offered to help me do the wiring next week, so that'll be fun.

And, a couple new pictures. Note in the back, there are two "boxes" on either side of the rear bench seat. I assume those are full of foam, and I'm wondering how the heck I'm going to route wiring through them to the switch plate I want to mount on the inside of one of them. I also wonder if putting holes in those boxes (and inviting rain into them) will compromise their flotation qualities...but my instinct is that foam is foam, and the box itself isn't providing the flotation, the foam is. Am I wrong about that?

Also note that up in the bow, there's a storage port, but also an interesting little "slot-shaped" port on the left. What's that one for, I wonder?

 

[SaltyDog]

Nice looking rig ya got there. Congrats! That slot shaped opening looks like its there to accommodate the ends of your fishing rods if you were to mount rod holders to the gunnels there on the port side. I will definitely be following your build. :WELCOME: to tinboats!

 

[dsuden]

Thanks SaltyDog! Always happy to hear any ideas and suggestions too, as I go along, so if you think I'm zigging where I should really be zagging, feel free to chime in.

 

[peabody]

dang...you've got a great start ! i assume you're going with tiller steering...
keep the dream alive ! and more pictures !!

 

[dsuden]

Day three: Packages have started arriving from Amazon. Installed the bilge pump last night, using a big ball of water weld pressed into a circle to attach the pump to the floor (thus no screws). The transom is too thick for the hull passthrough outlet gizmo so I am going to route the bilge hose to the starboard side hull right near the back corner and that's where the water will come out.

I decided to go stealthy on all the parts I'm installing. Black bilge hose, black-housing on the bow light, black anchor light rod, black conduit behind the ribs for the wires, black wire clamps where they have to be exposed, and I just spray-painted the outlet nozzle for the bilge black last night. I'll probably do the same for the pedestal mounts when I get those.

I have a Minn Kota V2 55 bow mount trolling motor I'm installing up on the casting deck, and it's going to require a significant riser, about six inches, to clear the front lip of the boat. I drew up a little plan for it, cut out cardboard pieces representing the top and bottom plates, and took them over to a local fabricator, and he will weld that together for me out of 1/4" aluminum. He gave me a quote I can live with.

Wire, holy smoke...$88 from a local shop. I thought it'd be less expensive through him since he had it in bulk rolls there. Lesson learned.

I love to "hide" wires, and had my work cut out for me when I routed them under the casting deck, which seems to have a variety of obstacles up in there. In the end, I used a coat hanger to guide a string up along the starboard edge alway the way to the turn, hooked it there, then did a second run of coat hanger to the point of the bow, to route the string the rest of the way. With a string now running the whole way, I then attached the end of the first wire to the string, plus a second string, and pulled those through. That left me with a string for pulling the next wire. Repeated that three times, and with some jockeying I got all the wires through to the front, where I'll be putting the bow light and trolling motor receptacle. By the way, I also attached a string to the final wire so there's a string "residing" in my feed-through area in case I ever need to pull another wire through.

Today I grit my teeth and start drilling holes in my new boat for bilge outlet, lights, etc. Arrgh! But it has to happen, so here we go!

 

[Kilo70]

I like what you got,looks like exactly what I'm thinking about.
Keep up the good work.

 

[dsuden]

Day four: We got the bilge mounted through the hull and I picked up some brackets for the hose (gray plastic, so sprayed them black). When the paint dries, we'll snug the hose down nice and neat.

In the background, the second car, the beatermobile. Don't laugh, we've got 292,600 miles on it and it still pulls a boat like it's not even back there!

 

[SaltyDog]

Looking good bro!

 

[peabody]

lookin great !!!

 

[dsuden]

Day five: Got the bilge line bracketed in. Scoured the hardware stores in our little town for a piece of black hose I could run beneath the ribs to act as a waterproof wire conduit and struck out, so drove a good piece down the road and visited Fleet Farm where I found some awesome heater hose. Drove it home happily and discovered it's too big to make it behind the ribs. Dang! Then wised up and went back to the local hardware store and bought a length of 1/2" PVC and it fit PERFECTLY. So I'm spray painting it black tonight and that goes in tomorrow.

The gang switch arrived today, and it looks like just the ticket. The switches have a nice solid snap to them when they're switched. They feel like good switches. I wrote to the company the other day and asked them if the switch is reliably weatherproof, and the guy wrote back and told me to seal it with silicone, which was a little unsettling. Hopefully he just means around the edges of the switchplate and not at the switches themselves! But the product is very nice looking, and has really classy peel-off labels that cover the bases for me... Anchor Light, Running Light, Bilge.

The guy I ordered the outboard from had said it could be in Thursday, that'd be tomorrow. I'm trying to keep my excitement in check...things seldom happen on schedule.

 

[dsuden]

Yay, the motor arrived at the dealer and I towed the boat to the dealer to pick it up. He not only put it on for me and bolted it into place, and instructed me on its use, but went a step further, volunteering to cut out a square hole in the aluminum where I will be putting the a gang switch plate. Pretty classy of him. The motor holds promise right from the start, literally. He said it started on one pull right from the box.

This evening my son and I ran the wires through the boat, including along the PVC channel behind the ribs, terminating out the hole where the gang switch will be installed.

 

[bulldog]

Making some very fast progress! Keep up the good work.

 

[craveman85]

From that angle it looks like a long shaft motor on a short transom....

 

[dsuden]

Mainly the angle I think. The motor *is* a long shaft, but the boat has a 20" transom.

 

[dsuden]

Day Seven...

With a little quick advice from my radio engineer friend, I was able to wire up the gang switch myself, so that got wired and mounted. It'll be awhile before the fabricator finishes the trolling motor riser, and we couldn't wait any longer, so we trailered the boat down to the boat landings near the Bay of Green Bay and went out onto the river for a test ride. The picture is my son taking his turn at the tiller.

I'm so glad I did lots of poking around here at tinboats.net before making any decisions. The Mirrocraft 448 (14', 48" bottom, 70" beam) floats nice and high, and is very, very stable. The Nissan 9.8 purrs like a kitten. We spent a couple hours breaking it in at all different speeds, and it never missed a beat. It started on the first pull every time. Very very happy with it. It brought us up to plane at full speed, and slowed to an absolute crawl at idle. When you start it in neutral, you have to strain to even year it running. Awesome.

My big question was, "how would the boat handle the big water?" After eyeballing the bay, we decided to do a little tentative circle out there, and wound up buzzing around for about 45 minutes in 1-2' chop. The modified vee hull must make a big difference, because we really didn't experience the jarring whacks I was expecting. As long as we took it easy when going into the waves, rolling over them rather than driving hard over them, we were just fine. When going with the waves, we could go full bore very comfortably, and even addressing the waves at an angle wasn't too bad. We have enough sense not to take the boat out unless things are pretty tame, but I'm satisfied that we're fine in moderately chopping conditions out there.

The other big question was, "how would the boat do in shallow conditions." I putted it over into a known low, sandy area until I started to bog down, and I don't think we were in more than a foot of water, maybe less. I hand-tiled the motor up so I could wheedle my way out of the muck, and the boat itself skimmed through water that couldn't have been more than six inches deep.

Conclusion, I think we've found a boat and motor that's just right for where we live: stable enough to be comfortable and safe in, shallow-running enough for our river, and sculpted enough in the front to venture into modest waves.

We still have a few things to finish up; mounting the trolling motor, strapping the battery box to the floor, etc., so when we get those things done, I'll do a final post and some "beauty shots."

 

[dsuden]

 

[dsuden]

Day 9:

The jon has been in the water for a few days now, so that we could start breaking in the engine while awaiting some accessories from Amazon, rivet nuts from Harbor Freight, etc. During that time, a couple rains came through, giving me a chance to confirm the bilge pump does its job just fine. So far the motor continues to start on one pull, and it seems like a nice match for the boat.

While some final bits and pieces trickle in from shippers, I've embarked on a side project, building a "finger dock" that'll allow me to pull the boat up to the main dock "slip style." After looking into prefab docks I decided to just build my own simple 12' long, 3' wide finger dock in two parts, connected by dock hinges, constructed of pressure treated lumber. The boat's 14', but 12' will be plenty long enough to let us step into the boat, load gear, etc.

So we'll start building the dock frame and add the deck boards tomorrow.

 

[dsuden]

Day 16 Hey, those rivet nuts someone suggested are really neat. I bought the little kit that comes with tool and nuts from Harbor Freight, and they worked great for putting bolts into the aluminum floor for mounting the battery anchor.

The aluminum riser we had made at a local shop (for hoisting the trolling motor up high enough to clear the lip at the bow of the boat) came and the guy did a great job on it. We got the Minn Kota quick-release bolted to it and have also pre-drilled the holes where it will mount into the bow, but we'll need to get some deeper rivet nuts than came in the cheapie kit from Harbor Freight.