Minn Kota Edge issue

New to me boat came with a Minn Kota 45 Edge and transom mount. The transom mount was mounted on the boat but the trolling motor had never been on it. New Feb of this year. The guy I bought it from had some health issues and decided to sell the boat.

Anyway when I mounted the trolling motor on the transom mount I found the motor end hits the transom mount before the control end can get to full horizontal position and the lock pins can't engage to lock it in the stow position. The "U" support towards the motor end can't do anything as the shaft will not go all the way down because the motor is keeping the whole thing from going to full horizontal position. I will try to post pics but getting pics that show what I am seeing is kind of difficult.
The first picture shows I have to pull the motor back behind the U support to get the whole unit to lay horizontal and lock pins will lock.
The second picture show where the motor should be with the U support to support the shaft but the other end will not go down far enough.
The third picture shows normal stow position but you can see the aluminum(silver) arm will not lay flat because the motor has hit at the front and does not allow the whole thing to lay flat.
Please tell me how dumb I am and what to do to resolve this issue. lol

may help to go to MinnKota's www site and get the manual....

did you try loosening up the steering tension knob to see if the shaft will slide down some more? I didn't see the depth collar on the shaft - do you still have that?

makomark said:

may help to go to MinnKota's www site and get the manual....

did you try loosening up the steering tension knob to see if the shaft will slide down some more? I didn't see the depth collar on the shaft - do you still have that?

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Yes sir, I have the original manual. It basically says to mount the bow mount, attach motor, and how to raise and lower it. lol In pic 3 you can see the depth collar up from the top shaft mount. Kind of hard to see but it is there. I can loosen the tension knob and slide the motor up and down ok. When I move the motor forward of the tube yoke and the motor rests on the motor rest, it hits the rest before the shaft can get full horizontal even with no tension on the steering collar. I have the motor (pic 3) pulled back behind the Yoke rest so that I can get it to go full horizontal and latch for the stowed position.

If the motor will slide "up and down ok", then there shouldn't be any problem getting things to lay flat....in other words, if you can 'lower' the prop from the position shown in your third pic, say maybe 4" or so, I don't see why things wont lay 'flat'...

makomark said:

If the motor will slide "up and down ok", then there shouldn't be any problem getting things to lay flat....in other words, if you can 'lower' the prop from the position shown in your third pic, say maybe 4" or so, I don't see why things wont lay 'flat'...

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I can only move the prop about two inches towards the rear of the boat before the prop motor hits the U bracket. There is a shoulder on the prop motor that doesn't fit down in the U bracket. I can force it down but it still doesn't lay flat. The motor hits first which tries to force the steering collar up before the aluminum arm gets flat. It puts a lot of pressure on the steering collar also.

By "lowering the prop", I intended to have you move the prop 'forward'...sometimes, I have seen parts on the mount get bent (distorted) and that was limiting the range on motion...but I don't see any of that from your pictures

makomark said:

By "lowering the prop", I intended to have you move the prop 'forward'...sometimes, I have seen parts on the mount get bent (distorted) and that was limiting the range on motion...but I don't see any of that from your pictures

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Thanks Mako, when I move the prop forward towards the front of the boat it hits sooner and makes things worse. I need to take a video and see if I can send it to Minn Kota and see what they have to say. PITA right now. lol