OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Repairs and Maintenance Questions on Engines Questions On Victa Two Stroke Engines Ideas for a small outboard engine

I have been given a 10ft tinnie which i plan to use for some fishing on the water up here. I have seen afew lawnmower engines turned into outboard engines but is the trouble / cost worth it? Not looking for open sea fishing, just in bays etc.

Cheers Josh

Search eBay, theres a Victa outboard 'jet' on there at the moment. There was two Victa prop motors sold the other week too.


Josh i think you are asking to get into a whole world of trouble. If you like being on the news then its all good. Lawnmower engine???? Whats a Victa rated at??? about 3.5 or 4HP. Thats just enough to get you out somewhere where you can get into trouble. Not enough to get you out of trouble. I would think with a tinnie that you would need more like 15HP or so to be sure you could get back in if things got a little nasty.

A converted mower engine might be Ok on a river or small lake/ large [Censored].



Bob.

Our waters around here are pretty enclosed, always a tonne of boats around so help isnt to far away, there is one section that would cause alot of problems with a small engine, its called 'the Rip' for obvious reasons.

I'm keeping my eye out for a small outboard but nothing has really come up yet that i would waste time on

Not picking on ya but they could be famous last words right there.


Onr of those victas would be Ok for Trolling i suppose. No fumes/exhaust, heated water in the water which would have to be a bonus.



I would be interested to know how they connected the crank to the drive shaft.



Bob.

Yeah knowing my luck a storm would hit on the first time out and the victa would be bloody useless lol

hey josh,i used one of those victa jets years ago. it was ok in the river getting from a to b, but thats about all,i never put much faith in it for some reason. it was very slow against the current. i wish i still had it just for keep sake more than anything now though. i have a 25hp outboard, but sometimes use a 3hp merc just for trawling, its a pretty quick motor for its size and super reliable. you might pick one up cheap, there great for just putting around, cheers micka

This is the area of water i'm talking about.

Its hard finding an outboard for cheap, then again i did get the boat given to me...

See thats it.


No such thing as cheap when it comes to Boats.

Sell it.


Bob.

Josh a genuine outboard 6 to 9.9 would be fine for one bloke in a tinney or at most two blokes and a very small bit of gear.

Years ago before I got my license I used to hire up here and the y were 6 hp Mercs. They are slow and a fair current runs where we visit but if you are on a budget then that's what you have to play with. The 9.9 on a 10 footer would be a nice budget wise combo that you would be pretty happy with.

Stick with someting as new and tidy as you can get. We got caught out once getting swept toward the river mouth whilst we were staring at the breakers. Not a comfortable experience.

As a kid I used to go fishing with my family on a large river estuary in a heavy clinker-built rowboat, as did dozens of other families. Very nearly all of them rowed, but we usually used a Seagull outboard, except when it wouldn't start (which happened as often on the way home as on the way out). Obviously no-one was travelling more than half a mile from their starting point, because progress was stately rather than brisk with maybe one horsepower in those ultra-heavy boats (two men couldn't drag one halfway out of the water). Equally obviously, no one would ever consider going into a current. We all just recognised that the outboard was there to save the work of rowing, not to expedite progress. There is still a place for that kind of boating, in my opinion: it's fun.

Grumpy - we have to get together one day! Reading this thread, I was thinking "Seagull", too!

As I recall, part of their advertising was "Only three moving parts!"

I can remember towing more than one Victa outboard home with our Seagull (3lbs thrust, if I recall correctly) - wasn't fast, but it would move the Queen Mary, given enough time

Igor, as far as I recall my father never had to do any actual maintenance on the Seagull - it was just difficult for anyone but him to start. More than a decade after my family had that Seagull I had a locally-made Atom Waterboy outboard of my own. It started out air cooled like the Seagull, but my father rebuilt it with a water-cooled cylinder (a Waterboy option). It was quite a bit more powerful than the Seagull, and easier to start as well (though that wasn't asking much). Those tiny cheap outboards served a purpose - the number of people who had power-boats increased greatly. With those second-generation outboards like the Waterboy, you could travel a bit further, though you still needed to keep the oars handy.

Havent found anything yet, watched a victa outboard sell for $86 on ebay. Not in a massive rush got plenty to keep me busy.

If that outboard was complete and fixable, it sounds cheap at that price.

I've been looking on youtube at some b&s engines turned into outboards and some of them really motor the boat along, as quick as i need to go anyway, i would still like to go down that road if i cant find a cheap old outboard.

Go with a small car engine on a stick like the do in Asia

what put the prop on the tail shaft? lol

The ones in Thailand mount a 4 cyl car engine on a pivot, and run a rigid prop shaft about 8 or 10 feet back, with a prop on the end of it - about 1" bar, no joints. Looks very crude, but they get cheap, efficient engines with as much power as they want. They just run river water through the cooling system, and for brief stops they just tilt the engine to lift the prop out of the water.

I don't think it would comply with Australian safety and water traffic regulations, though.

Hi All, wouldn't a well maintained, secondhand, reliable outboard be a better and safer option? You often see them come up on e-Bay, and many marine centres have them for sale at reasonable prices.

I wouldnt put my life in the hands of an ebay seller.


Its probably best to say on land. Sharks live in the water and fish [Censored] in it.

Enough said.


Bob.