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Adjusting Power Trim Settings to Plane an Outboard Motor

In this video I go through the basics of trimming an outboard to make a boat both plane an maneuver well on the water. Getting a boat to plane well requires the motor trimmed up, stopping and reversing requires the outboard trimmed right down.

Dangar Marine

About Dangar Marine

MarineEngine.com proudly sponsors the Dangar Marine YouTube Channel. Our friend Dangar Stu draws on his experience as a commercial boat skipper and mechanic to make some great how-to videos. Dangar Marine videos cover a range of relevant topics in outboard repair, boat repair/upgrades and seamanship. Subscribe on YouTube to be notified when new videos are released.

Adjusting Power Trim Settings to Plane an Outboard Motor – Video Transcript

Hey there, Dangar Stu here. Today's quick tip video is on trimming a boat with an outboard motor and is proudly sponsored by MarineEngine.com.

Now there isn't a huge amount to trimming a motor but this is the way I do it. When I take off from standing still like this or when I'm doing maneuvering I trim it all the way down. sS that's trimmed down with the leg coming towards the transom of the boat. Then if you start it and take off you'll get good bite in the water and we'll get up on the plane a bit faster. So now we'll accelerate what you'll find is the boat leaps out of the water takes up quite flat. I'll stop again so it's not too noisy but when you take off trim down the boat will stay flat it rises up.

This engine has a hydrofoil on it now which also stops the bow from coming up too much. But you get to a point where the boat is kind of digging in the front of the boats going into the water and you're not reaching maximum rpm. And the boat's not really riding that well in the water. It's a bit wet because the bow pushes in and you're getting a bit of sort of splash coming over the bow. So what I'm going to do now is take off the same way but once we get up to speed I'm going to start trimming it up and hopefully you'll be able to hear and see the difference that makes. You can see then we're getting quite a lot of spray because the nose is down quite a bit so I'm going to start to trim up. You can see there that as I trim up the bow starts to rise and all that sort of wet white water disappears. So as all that white water disappears only the back part of the boat is in the water that means you got less resistance on the boat so you're going to go faster and you're going to stay drier. You could also hear the rev's increased.

Now they actually increase too much for a bit. So I trim back down. If it starts to ventilate and starts to suck air you've trimmed up too high. Then all you need to do is just back down on the trim to the point where it's not ventilating and you're kind of in that sweet spot for full throttle running. So what we're going do this time is take off trim down. So now to trim all the way down again to start with. Then take off, trim it up but I'll intentionally trim it too high so you can really hopefully clearly hear what it sounds like when it starts to ventilate. Then I'll just trim back down so that's trimmed all the way down still very wet. So that's running quite nicely now. If I trim too far up you can hear the Rev's go through the roof. I am just dropping it down again to the proper height. And that's pretty much spot-on to me now.

You can see the bow's up a little bit what's left of the bow on this boat and is running really nicely in a good rev range. With speed sitting really stable and dry in the water. Now the trick to trimming the boat is that once you stop you need to remember it's trimmed all the way up because you're maneuvering and particularly your bite in Reverse would be terrible with it trimmed all the way up. So we'll go over towards the shore and I'll show you that. Sorry lots of cidada noise over this side of the river but we're heading towards a cliff here and then what I'll do is I'll head towards it and I'll show you as I go into reverse if I leave it trimmed up I can give it loads and loads of revs but the boat will only pull up very slowly.

So I think I'm coming towards the wall I put it into neutral then I go in reverse and the boat keeps traveling for quite a bit. We were actually going very slowly then for obvious reasons. This time we will head to the shore even a bit faster. But we've trimmed all the way down so hopefully you can see then the boat stops ten times better when the motors trimmed all the way down. So to summarize when you take off initially have the motor trimmed all the way down it'll help you get up onto the plane without the bow raising up too much. You will hit a certain speed though where the boat won't go any faster and depending on the hull you could start to get quite wet. So if you trim the motor up and the bow will rise a bit which will keep you drier. The water will sort of stop splashing over the shoulders of the boat here and only the back of the boat will be in the water. This means the rev's will increase, you'll stay drier and you'll use less fuel and you'll be going faster. So all those are kind of desirable things.

When you come off the plane now and go to stop get in the habit of trimming it straight back down because if you need to go in reverse or you need to do any maneuvering that will always be better with a motor all the way down. And really that's about all there is to it. All right well take care I will catch you again soon. I hope this helps you if you're new to boating and you just try to understand how to use the trim on your boat. It's not that hard but it's well worth mastering to make your boating a lot more comfortable and efficient.


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