CONTINUOUSWAVE

Is it realistic to take a rivet nut or some kind of stud to mount a removable trolling motor on the bow of the 170 (or any boat)?

What I'm thinking is, get a significant size rivet nut (or stud insert) and flush mount them in the bow of the boat where a trolling motor mount would fit. Made out of quality stainless steel and drilled then epoxied or secured in some manner to the bow of the boat.

This, then, allowing me to screw in/out the trolling motor mount when desired. During the winter/spring I do a lot of fishing, but all summer long my little girls love to jump off the front of the boat and I don't really want something they can trip over and possibly get cut on.

I was thinking if they were flush mounted, I could even get a flat (flush mount) plastic 'screw' with the correct size and thread pitch to fill the hole when not in use.

Any suggestions or wisdom that can be imparted to me would be great.

I know I'll have concerns with the bow rail, but until I can do it as I want. I may just not have one on the bow.
[Bad link to image has been deleted--jimh]

Not sure what brand trolling motor you have, but Minn Kota makes a bunch of mounts that allow you to remove your trolling motor quite easily.

I created a bracket for my 15' Super Sport Limited that I bolted the removable motor mount base to. The bracket allowed me to move the trolling motor outside of the rail while using the existing wood embedded in the bow area to secure it to.

Please describe in a bit more detail the RIVET NUT. I have not heard of these devices.

A rivet nut looks like (sorry, tried to resize, but every option in the img tag failed to yield the results desired):


I was thinking of drilling down in the bow and potentially using epoxy (or some compound) around this and under it to secure it well. Making the rivet nut flush mounted so it would be completely out of the way. Of course I'd like to find a high quality stainless version - I'm sure that's possible.

My concern would be making sure it was adhered strong enough to stay in. I'm not sure if they make a rivet nut that has a 'screw' tip on the 'down' side. I know they make them with pin flanges, but ideally it would be a coarse threaded screw to go into the wood. Maybe something like:

If I could find a large enough size and pitch to be strong.

@drewread - I like your install and that would work beautifully, but my bow rail is much further to the outside of the bow. That makes it virtually impossible to have the install you did. That's a pretty clean install.

Having the little girls, ideally I'd like to even take off the black plate and simply have screw holes (ie: rivet nuts or threaded inserts).

The concern you are going to have with the threaded insert idea will be water intrusion. I don't see how you could have them installed and have them completely sealed from the elements.

FWIW the Black piece can be removed very easily from my install, simply 4 bolts which are only into the aluminum. Essentially what you are trying to do, just above the gelcoat. :)

I was part of a thread on the old forum. You can get to one picture here: http://s691.photobucket.com/user/davidtollefson/media/ P1080969_zpsgoulffkr.jpg.html?filters[user]=93776292&filters[recent]=1& sort=1&o=0 but you will have to click on my name to get the rest of the the pictures in the file. This is the other mounting option from Minn-Kota and consists of a permanently mounted "puck" that fits into a base mounted to the trolling motor. All of this is Starboard or other HDPE plastic. It's a lot nicer to bare feet