Looking for feedback on 6hp kickers

Sawdust · Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 10:35 pm Post subject:

Very little difference in get-home-ability between a 6 and 9.9. use them both regularily, and like Dr. Bob have spent many hours in crappy weather runniing the kicker on a big boat. The little 6 Tohatsu will push our 22 to 5 or 6 -- the 9.9 Yamaha 7 or 8. No way are you going to have enough power to climb over your bow wave -- so much over hull speed is just making noise and wasting fuel. Runniing into heavy wind and/or waves the 9.9 will do better, but not much. Just one opinion -- and this poor old horse has been kicked around here for years. Archives are loaded with ths same discussion.

Personally I don't like the Honda 5 -- but YMMV --

Dusty

hughpenk · Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 10:31 am Post subject:

Maybe not related to kicker power or lack of, but I would prefer what ever kicker it is, that it has the ability to generate 12v for redundancy.

C-Pelican · Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 11:32 am Post subject:

I've got a 6hp Tohatsu 4-stroke kicker on my 22 and it works fine and I also use it on my dinghy at Catalina and such places.

I use a seperate fuel tank for it as another "back-up" in case my main fuel tanks are compromised in any way.

Mine is in a slip at HB and as a fellow Brat here shared...I will take you for a ride if desired.

Though I flush both motors, the Tohatsu is very persnickity about salts and I find I need to take it off the boat and put it in a pail of water to flush it thoroughly or the pee-hole will clog up.

russell dunsmore · Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 2:31 pm Post subject:

Bill:I have the 23 venture with a honda 9.9 on a bracket. It pushes the boat 7-8 mph and I feel its a great kicker motor,maybe a little on the heavy side. In December my buddy and I went trolling for stripers in the delta. He had a new mercury 8 hp. He wanted to put some hours on it, so we put it on the venture. We were trolling in a wind chop of 3' and I could not tell any defference from my honda. The mercury had the gear shift and throttle in the tiller. It was different!

Jimmylee · Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 3:01 pm Post subject:

We also run a 6-hp kicker (Suzuki 4-stroke) on our 22 and it does very well. We use it primarily for trolling around while we are salmon fishing in the San Juans where we are always dealing with wind and currents. I have been pleasantly surprised at how well it pushes the boat around.

Chip

Best Day · Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 7:12 pm Post subject:

Well, thanks for all the responses. And thank you bschell and C-Pelican for your very generous offers. I think I do have enough responses that I'm comfortable getting the 6hp. Now I just need to find someone with it in stock.

The idea of a second fuel tank is a very good one. I think that when, in the future, I go to Baja I will bring a dedicated tank for the kicker. Around here, filling up at the local gas station, I'm not worried about fuel quality.

The idea of an alternator in the kicker is a very good one! But in my case I always have my Honda 1000 on board. When I need to charge the batteries I run my 20amp battery charger off it. So in my case I already have redundancy. If my Yamaha 90 and Honda 1000 both decide not to work than I really am having some bad luck and I should probable just stay right where I am until help arrives.

Also the info I provided in my first post about the prop size on the Yamaha 6hp is wrong. It is from Yamahas website but they haven't updated the site to show info for the new 6hp's. I called Yamaha and I should have the correct info tomorrow. I didn't want people reading this and getting bad information.

Thanks for all the help.

Bill