Minn Kota Endura C2 30 Transom Mount Electric Outboard Motor 12V - Black

I spent some years using a 25HP 4 stroke outboard as my daily transport propulsion, so was not sure how I’d get on going to the other extreme for this device, which I bought to put on an 8’ rowing boat on a river. Note that this motor is NOT warranted for salt water use – Minn Kota do other motors for that. In any case nearly all salt waters being tidal, I would not think this powerful enough to deal with tidal currents.Now for some facts that I would have like to have known before purchase as the info here is pretty slim:PACKAGING: You get a big box as this motor is almost fully assembled. It is a polystyrene free zone with just papier mache moulds holding it top and bottom and the bits neatly bagged.MANUAL: Short but sweet, and I do like a manual that lists all the parts for you. You can easily find it online if you want to download before purchasing.ASSEMBLY: All you have to do is push the handle into its socket – once in it is there for good.DIMENSIONS: The clamping jaws are quite generous so it will fit on a transom up to 8cm thick. But the assembly itself is quite narrow requiring 10cm outboard and 15cm inboard (from the outside edges of the clamps). This is good as I was, to my surprise, able to put it alongside my rudder assembly.DEPTH: The maximum depth from the top of your transom to the bottom of the skeg is 95cm. Because of the locking clamp you can raise it much higher.CABLES: A little short for my taste at 1.5cm, finished with 9.5mm ID spade terminals. These are intended for use with the Minn Kota battery box, I assume. Quality seems decent. The lead into the motor seems reasonably well executed to minimise the risk of chafe. I cut the spades off and used quick release battery clamps (from Amazon) which are very convenient. M-K provide a useful chart of the cable sizes you should use if you want to extend (being DC it’s important to have bigger cables the longer they go).SKEG & PROP: There does not seem to be an automatic kick-up if you hit something but the skeg is 5mm thick and seems to be part of the casting for the motor – or probably welded on. Anyway pretty solid. M-K make a big thing of it being an unbreakable composite shaft (guaranteed for life) and clearly you are not going to be whacking into coral reefs at 20kts, so hopefully if you do ground the motor you’ll just grind to a halt with no damage. I have grounded several times on bits of river where there were stony patches or logs previously unplumbed by my oars and there were no problems. The prop is plastic and got slightly scuffed but at these speeds you are unlikely to get vibration from an unbalanced prop and the plastic probably has more give which would reduce the chance of breaking the shear pin. I sandpapered the rough bits down. The quick release for tilt works well and you can lock the motor at different angles easily for shallow work.MATERIALS: The tramsom fitting is plastic which gave me some cause for concern, but it is an inexpensive and light motor and they are solid plastic so probably fine. I’ve not seen complaints on this when I looked at reviews from US owners.ALTERNATIVES: As well as more powerful (and power-hungry) motors M-K now do a MAX version of this range. Not sure if it is in the UK yet. It costs quite a bit more and claims to about double your battery life. As far as I can see the guts are the same and it does this by electrickery in the controls. More to go wrong maybe and you could just get a bigger battery but if range anxiety is an issue for you then this could be one to consider.PARTS: Availability of basic parts in the UK seems OK. I have ordered a telescopic extension handle which I think will be useful for solo work.HOW FAST WILL IT GO? You can see some useful clips recording speeds on Youtube. I can only speak to my little 8’ midweight rowing boat on a flat river. Of course you are not going to get the performance of a petrol outboard (a 2.5hp unit produces around 80lbs thrust). But nor do you get the noise or pollution, which is are important factors for me on my quiet rural river. Here are my results with just me on board. This was done with some current and wind so I’ve averaged out upstream and downstream but it’s still a little rough as the speed was quite susceptible to wind. Speeds in mph over ground.Speed 2: 1.4Speed 3: 1.8Speed 4: 2.0Speed 5: 2.5Speed 1 was too slow to give me steerage way. These speeds were a bit slower than I was expecting as I saw a clip of a 14’ boat doing 4kts with a 40lb thrust motor, and I am sure a RIB would be quicker but I am perfectly happy with them.I went out with two up and seemed to get a slightly improved figure – about 3kts. This is presumably due to better balance – I was quite stern-down for my first trial which would have increased drag.BTW apparently M-K recommend a minimum of 2lbs of thrust for every 100lbs of load.WHAT BATTERY? That naturally depends on a) Weight of the boat and cargo b) Desired range c) Likely conditions – wind, current etc. The battery should of course be deep cycle (if you don’t understand why then go to batteryuniversity.com) and M-K recommend a minimum of 105AH. I did not want the weight of that and only have a limited range on my stretch of river (quite apart from enjoying rowing) so I got a 70AH deep cycle (aka ‘leisure’) sealed lead acid battery from Halfords. Lugging heavy batteries is a cause of damage to people and boats in my experience (both, when one acquaintance went through the bilge boards carrying one!) so this is something to think about. When I was managing a 1200AH bank on a boat I preferred to have more and smaller batteries for this reason. You could for example have two or more batteries and wire them together or just swap them over when they get low. This could also help with weight distribution in a small craft.BREAK IT? M-K say “an over-current protection device (circuit-breaker or fuse) must be used”. I think this is to comply with US coastguard regulations and have ignored for my direct hook-up but you should of course take your own advice. SEE UPDATE JULY 2015.HOW FAR WILL IT GO? That again depends on the factors above but here are my results. Starting with a fully charged battery (13.1v) I went 1.6 miles upstream. At this point the M-K’s “power meter” gave 3 out of 4 lights (“good”) and the battery registered 12.59v after brief rest. After the return journey the meter still showed 3 out of 4 and the battery was at 12.52v. So that’s about 75% charged and it looks like I could go maybe twice that distance (i.e. over 7 miles) before reaching 12.2v. For my second trip I went about double that (about 6.5 miles) and came back at 2.18v so that seems about right. Like many people I consider 12.2v the point below which you don’t want to routinely discharge a deep cycle, in order to optimise battery life, but if you are happy to then it looks like you’d be good for 10 miles (in a boat like mine) or even 15 if you want to totally flatten (and damage) the battery.These are very crude calcs. I read on someone’s blog a current draw calculation which showed that his 30lb M-K draws about twice as much current at speed 5 compared to speed 4, and that makes sense. As so often with engines you’ll get a lot more mileage if you don’t max the speed.HOW QUIET IS IT? Very quiet. When I first put it on I was not sure it was working. I could not really hear it at all below speed 4, and then only just. Speed 5 seems to jump up quite a bit in power but even then there is just a very quiet hum. I love the silence of speed 4 though. It is quieter than the creak and splash of rowing and the noisiest part was when I rounded the corner to surprise some swans with 5 cygnets who threw a real hissy fit at me.VERDICT: I love the design of this which all comes together in a very coherent way. It is ideal for my purposes and I think excellent value for the right application.UPDATE JULY 2015The motor is still going well. This year our river is exceptionally weedy and after ploughing through it for quite a while (with stops to reverse and throw it off, or manually remove) after about an hour I saw smoke coming out of the headcase. We rowed back for a while then after it had seemed to cool down put the motor back on and it seemed fine. I stripped down the headcase and found some of the wire insulation had started to melt due to overheating. Minn Kota say you should put a 50AMP inline circuit breaker in. This is the law in the US but not here and I had not done it. I am now doing so as the extra current being drawn by the motor was overheating the wires and I could have done quite a bit more damage. The Minn Kota own brand breakers are quite pricey and seem the same as Well-Goal. I have found an alternative for under a tenner which is resettable and neater and sold here as DC12V Car Stereo Audio Circuit Breaker Inline . I could not however find the correct amperage so had to get it elsewhere.

This a surprisingly powerful motor for such a compact and light design and it moves along at a good pace. The controls are intuitive and, best of all, it is very quiet.

Starts off very powerful however on both trips I've used it. On a full battery slows to a snails pace after about half hours usage....think I may have a duff one... using a brand new leisure battery from Halfords bizarre

Great little engine - used regularly for a year on the back of a 9' row boat on Lough Curran and never gave a problem.

I've had three electric trolling engines over the past 15 years. This seems relaible and consumes less power than previous

great value thought the price was mistake . best engine on market by far and free postage very good deal

We use this on our tender dingy, it's great, gets you from the beach to your boat in no time and is really easy to handle.

Not used it yet but sure it'll be fine