Added Transom Height

With my 1957 Evinrude, the shaft length is slightly longer than the 20" standard used today (I believe post 1960). This meant to get the cavitation plate level to the bottom of the transom I would need to add some height. I was able to do so this weekend and am pretty happy with the results. I epoxied three pieces of 3/4" mahogany plywood and used 1 1/4" bronze screws to get a good grip through to the transom. You can see the two pieces I added on the front side, I had wanted to make that of one piece but didn't have enough wood to make it work. It still needs some shaping and sanding but overall it has a tight fit. Before I epoxied everything I had thought about getting a different outboard to use, something that would fit better, but now I'm glad I took this route. I can always take a saw and chop off the added height if I want to.

I also played around with the cable and pulley steering system and think I finally have it figured out. The problem I have been running into is the height of the outboard means the cable has to come down quite a bit to fit into the pulley. This means instead of drilling a small hole through the coaming, I may have to make a slit in the top of the decking between the coaming and the sheer.