mud motor boaters

[kf03aggie]

For those of you who own and run mud motors I have a question for you. Yesterday I picked up my first jon boat and mud motor, and was wanting to get everyones opinion on foaming the deck. The boat has aluminum deck and would be easy to dump a few cans of great foam under there. What are the pros and cons of doing this? Is there anything special I should look out for? Thanks Guys!

kf

[Ride_Klein]

Not a mud motor guy, but if you're going to foam under the deck don't use the great stuff type foam. It will become waterlogged real quickly.

You're looking for a 2 part expanding foam that is closed cell.

Jamestown distributing sells what you want, I think West Marine does too.

RK

[fowlwaters]

Foam sucks and ands wieght.

[Hawkpuppy 1]

NO FOAM! The only foam in my boat (Go-Devil surface drive 16x48) is the factory stuff under the sealed front deck and in the sealed factory sides in the back. Nothing under the floor. All foam will eventually get wet and water logged. I know guys that have taken out factory under floor foam that was waterlogged and weighed almost 125lbs.

Dave

[ramrod]

X2

[robertn]

No Foam

[Lungbustr]

I remove my foam. Too much weight in a duckboat with just dogs, decoys, guns, gear and people already.

[River Rider]

There is also sheet foam you can buy from Lowes and Home depot that works well as it doesn't absorb water. I have used it in a couple Jon boat mods I done when I removed a seat and added an aluminum floor.

[hellbndr23]

Foam really does nothing for you. The water displacement of the boat hull is whats keeping you floating. The only time it would come into play is if you completely swamped the boat and then it has to be the closed cell type.

[froghunter]

Foam really does nothing for you. The water displacement of the boat hull is whats keeping you floating. The only time it would come into play is if you completely swamped the boat and then it has to be the closed cell type.

this right here^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[River Rider]

Correct on the fact the foam is there for safety purposes so to say. I removed a middle bench seat out of a john which held foam. TO comepensate for what I removed I lined the floors betweeen the ribs with 1 1/2" closeed cell sheet foam from Lowes. Then added aluminum sheeting on top for a floor. It's main prupose was so that if my boat was swamped I would have enough floatation to save it from sinking.

[hellbndr23]

Not saying it wasn't worth doing but did you calculate the floatation pounds of the foam u put in? I would assume you would calculate the total area of foam because that's what would be displacing the water. This thread has just got me thinking that's all.

[hellbndr23]

Water weighs roughly 62# / cubic foot. That makes for more floatation from the foam than I was thinking.