This page is all about making a copy of a Russian design of outboard trolley to make it easier to transport a 2 stroke outboard around your property, carry it in your car without lifting and fitting it to the transom of your SIB again without having to take the weight of the outboard.
Take a look here for how its done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE_6f6RmOKk&t=207s
That should give you an idea of how easy it is to move about either upright or laying down.
I had already made several trolleys from sack barrows & with mods was able to transport my outboards in the car without having to lift them in or out.
So as you see adding top wheels allows the trolley to be rolled with engine attached into and out of an estate car or hatchback. While this works well enough you still need to lift the full weight of the outboard when removing it from the trolley to attach it to or remove it from your transom. This gets harder as you get older, trust me I know!
So I watched quite a lot of Russian videos to see if I could get an idea of dimensions to see if I could build something suitable with parts and material from my workshop. One video gave quite a few dimensions from which I could work out the others, so I had a plan of what steel I needed.
A look around the workshop steel stocks told me I was in trouble, since I retired i've been using what I had for odd jobs, I had some 25mm square tube but it was just too heavy wall thickness so the trolley would have weighed as much as the outboard!
I needed some lighter box section, a quick look on marketplace found some office tables being offered for next to nothing, 24 x 48 x 1.5mm tube was used for the frame and legs, so one table would supply enough material for the job. I collected "a few" tables as I couldn't resist the price. Have you seen the price of steel these days, shocking. So around 5mtr of tube was required for one trolley plus assorted other box section, timber, plywood, fixings and 4 wheels.
Here is the bottom section having the axle tube welded at the correct height, note the use of 25mm square heavy duty box for the point where the outboard will pivot via its remote steer tube.
Here is the bottom section after a coat of hammerite paint. The strange lugs to the outside of the verticals were originally table top fixing points, I elected to leave them on as a reminder of where the steel came from.
In this next picture you will note that the axle tube (20mm conduit) is held in place by 2 black knobs. This makes the axle tube removable for space width wise in the car & also allows for other wheels with differing axles to be fitted. Above that the ply yoke is to keep the outboard pointing at a right angle to the frame & is held in place with wing nuts, the reason is so it can be placed below as shown or above the support bar to allow muffs to be fitted if you need to flush the engine on the stand. The floor plate is removable as are the wheels and axle tube if required to give space when laying in the car. The top wheels & frame clamp to the outboard transom mounting & its shape is dependent on the access to the tailgate area of your car.
The next photo's show how even with a big step down into the tailgate, the trolley and outboard fit without lifting. The footplate has one knob holding it in place & as said the wheels and axle tube are also quickly removed to give space. The rug is used to protect the painted bumper from damage.
Below is the trolley ready to move to the car.
Here in this photo its ready to be wheeled out to fit on the boat transom or another frame for a bucket flush.
That's about it, I will add a few pics of mine & others builds to give an idea from close ups.
You can also offload the outboard to a conventional engine trolley just as easy as to the transom. The trolley itself is very stable, I take mine up & down 3 steps to my garden without worry. If you wish the trolley can by removing the ply yoke become a sack barrow, though if you use it for that purpose you might like to consider adding a couple of wheel guards.
Yoke fits above or below AV plate. note the locking knob on the foot plate.
The yoke has a strap fitted to secure the leg in position.
Note the support pin running through the steering tube in this one below. I found on my SIB the tubes are so big that the support pin couldn't be removed without fouling the tube when the engine was lowered onto the transom, so I had to mod the support pin by cutting it in two. This makes little difference to the motor security on the trolley as the pin is a close fit to the ID of the steering tube.
If you are considering building one of these an estimate of cost for materials if you were buying new would be around £100, then of course you need to either fabricate & weld it together and paint it, or get someone to do it for you, if its the latter then I would think with current labour costs you wont see much change out of £250 including materials.
The cheapest route would be to purchase from Russia and working on their local pricing it should be half the price shipped, but they dont seem to want to do business with the UK. The import taxes here now might bump the price back up anyway.
September 2021 update.
So time for some more fettling, I want to be able to flush the outboard while its mounted on this russian stand, there are 2 methods, first is the flush muff & this is by far the most simple as I made sure the cross bar and ply engine steady were high enough to allow a muff to fit below the steady.
Second is the old favorite, the bucket or tub. I fancied going slightly more upmarket than the standard floppy tub. I have a very strong 100ltr tub but it holds just too much water for a flush so I sought out from Facebook marketplace a £10 blue 60ltr barrel.
These locally are as new, they have once carried dried goods in polly bags so no nasties to clean out and size wise are perfect for my engine once adjusted.
I needed to be able to clear the engine steady so remade it to mount on a hinge so it can be flicked up out of the way when the tub is in place.
As the whole engine is hanging on the steering tube it wants to dip back and touch the frame so you do need to prop it in position to prevent this, easy done with a bit of timber and some silent block mounting pads covered with some foam.
So with this in place and the lower steady flipped up out of the way (takes moments) its ready for the barrel.
I made a base out of old decking scraps to slot into the floor frame on the trolley, it just steadies up the barrel positioning.
So now its time to trim the barrel, I didnt want or need the full height so got the jigsaw on it. I did want to keep the 2 handles, so its a strange shape but its fine.
It sits well on the decking and just needs one more thing....
I fitted a drain tap with a hoselock fitting, so I am able to use the water thats below the oil slick to water plants & once the water gets below the tap its easy to lift the barrel out from under the leg.
Also although its against the water co regulations, you can fill the barrel via the hoselock fitting and tap, turning off the tap when you have enough water inside. So the same hoselock fitting on your garden hose fits both muffs and barrel.
Hope this gives someone inspiration for those long winter months when no seaside activities are possible.
As a small update to this, I found that filling the tub with water to just about AV plate level was not enough to prime the water pump into action.
The water needed to fill to overflowing before it was at a level to start pumping, once primed the pump would keep showing a very healthy tell tail until the water again dropped to below the AV plate. So care should be taken to ensure enough water in the tub before starting the outboard.
I have a 2 inch gap from skeg to bottom of the tub so I think the simple way to ensure enough water above the AV plate is to raise the wood platform that the tub sits on by 2 inches and always fill initially to well above the plate.
As considered packing the wood platform up by a further 2 inches did solve the problem of filling to the splash plate easily.
I also upgraded the yoke hinge as the one I used originally was mild steel, Its now full stainless with bearings as it will be water splashed when flushing.
