I have a 18' nitro boat with a 45lbs thrust motor guide trolling motor on it and it doesn't move the boat as fast as I would like it to. I was wondering if there was any modifications I could do to it inorder to make it move my boat faster. I can run it in both 12 and 24 volt. I thought maybe if I buy a 3 blade propeller that would help. Any segestions?

NOS maybe haha jp i had to say that

NOS maybe haha jp i had to say that

NOS on an electric motor? Naw, but adding a few more batteries in series might speed it up (until the point 3 minutes later when the motor burns up).

Are you currently running it 12V or 24V? It seems to me, since you have that option (lucky!) that 24V would give the better performance of the two.

I can't help, but I will ask Critter when he gets in this PM...he works with lots of electric motors..he may have idea....

I don't know how the 12/24V thing works on the Motorguides I would think that they would say if it made a difference in the thrust. You would think that 24V would put out twice as much thrust, but I don't know.
I have used the Kippawa three blade prop. I liked it but am not sure it made as much difference in speed as they claim.
Good Luck.

A few months ago I bought a 70lbs thrust Motorguide and its great. The more horse power the better. If it was me I'd get the biggest my wallet can afford. I bought 2 other trolling motors before I broke down and bought this 70lb. I luv it and it gets me where I need to be. Its a 24volt but its great. I'll never go below 70lbs again and I only have a 17ft basstracker....

We're eventually going to have to upgrade the trolling motor on our pontoon boat. That 70lb thrust sounds pretty good. I'll have to check into that. The manufacturer only put a 35lb on this boat, and if you have any wind going you end up going the wrong way.

Can you imagine a 70lb thrust on my little washtub??? ROFL..But in all honesty...I've got a 35LB thrust and even on the washtub, if the wind is blowing very hard it's a lost cause

ever see these???
http://cabelas.com/cabelas/en/content/Item/01/07/38/i010738sq04.jpg

http://cabelas.com/cabelas/en/templates/links/link.jsp?type=product&cmCat=Related_IPL_018092&id=0001090010738a

those man you can fool the gome wardens with man they try to write you a ticket but you just say it was you troling moter haha

They want a few pretty pennies for the 165 lb model too. That's more than I paid for my first car.

I've got to agree with you about the 70# minimum.

We burnt up the 12V 55# we had and Dave let us borrow his 74# Minn Kota.

All I can tell you is I will never be happy with the 12V again. :(

I havea 12 volt 54# Motorguide that was running down the single battery pulling my 22' deckboat so I added another battery in parallel. Remember series wiring increases voltage but NOT amp/hour capacity and parallel wiring increases capacity but NOT voltage. Now I can troll all day in fairly stiff wind and get a pretty good speed going. Faster than you would wanna bass fish anyway.

I just did a little more research and here's what I found...every 400 pounds of your boat’s weight needs about 5 pounds of thrust from the trolling motor to move it.
Here's a chart from BassPro as well:
Boat Length in Feet = Pounds ofThrust Required

12' boat requires a minimum 30# thrust
13' boat requires a minimum 30# thrust
14' = 32
15 36
16 40
17 50
18 55
19 65
20 74
21 74
22 101
Hope this helps.

Found this too:
When replacing trolling motor batteries you need to know that a 12 volt system requires a minimum of 1.1 to 1.2 amps per pound of thrust. A 24 volt system requires .85 to .95 amps per pound of thrust. And a 36 volt system requires .5 to .55 amps per pound of thrust. Hopefully your rig was wired w/ a heavy guage wire from battery to troller as well.

I saw an interesting set-up at Cope Marine last year. They had a small pontoon that used two trolling motors as its sole power. It used a 4X4 array of batteries, two serial by 2 parallel.