Adding kicker to 2175 Pro V

I’m looking at a used 2175 and it currently doesn’t have a kicker. After reading online I still have a couple questions and I’m looking for some opinions. I will most likely buy the engine online and install myself. The main engine is a 300 Verado and the boat is not prerigged for a kicker. I will be going with a tiller model and not remote steer.

Here’s some questions I have;

Tohatsu/Suzuki/Mercury are all the same engine, correct?

Will the bigger alternator on the 15/20 hp models actually be useful for anything? Could I power my display on a separate battery thAn the starter and electric steering battery, and have my tiller hooked to it? This would require three batteries in the rear – is anyone doing it this way? Boat does have a 36 volt TM.

What’s the difference between Pro Kicker motors and regular four strokes?

Price difference between 20 hp and 15 hp online is $300 or so – so why not go a little bigger? It appears to be the exact same engine in every other respect. I’m in ND so I don’t need to worry about 9.9 restrictions on any bodies of water.

How difficult is rigging a kicker? Seems pretty straight forward. What other parts would a guy need – mounting bracket? Mini jack plate?

I appreciate all thoughts and comments. Have a good 2020.

Nothing special required for my ProV. Clamp or bolt it on, run gas line to it, run power to it for tilt & trim and electric start.

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Marco Pelton wrote:

What’s the difference between Pro Kicker motors and regular four strokes?

Thrust and prop typically. With a kicker, one tends to look for power/thrust and not speed which plays into your question about bigger motors, 15 – 20 HP. If you are looking to troll at super slow speeds and have throttle control in tenths of a mph, I would suggest to do like Dutch and go with the 9.9 kicker model.

If it were me I’d definitely get a Merc 15 EFI Pro Kicker and bolt it on. They weigh only slightly less than a 9.9 and the price difference isn’t alot. In addition I’d install a TrollMaster or an iTroll to precisely control speed. Lock the kicker straight, get the boat moving slightly slower that the speed you want to troll at and steer the boat with your electric trolling motor while getting the speed where you want it. It’s a great way to troll and once you get used to it, you won’t want to do it any other way.

I’d go with the Mercury 15 Pro Kicker or the Suzuki 9.9 high thrust. Both are EFI, high thrust, power tilt, 25 inch shaft length and available with a tiller handle.

FWIW the Tohatsu and Mercury share the same power head.

I have a 9.9 zuke carb and love it. They are a little cold blooded, but once they run for a min, great. I thought about the EFI, but justified for how often I use it the carb might be cheaper to maintain if something went wrong in the future. I would like to see what a 15/25 hp would do on a 20/22 ft boat. Maybe it’s me and my 18 ft but because the boat never gets on plane when the kicker is at full throttle it just moves a ton of water and only goes 6mph. As for the charging, it plenty to run my radio and 2 onix 10s with no battery drain on the cranking. I think it’s like a 5 or 10 amp but not sure.

As far as I know the pro kicker has heavier mounting bracket to take pounding when on plane with the big motor. Also some standard 4 strokes don’t have electric start or tilt feature.

If you plan to use the verado power steering with it linked to the verado you definitely want the bigger 15 so it has a larger amp alternator. I have a 9.9 and it would drain the battery with the power steering running with just the kicker running. The 9.9 only has enough amps for the 9.9 motor run. It has no where near enough to maintain the voltage with the power steering on. I actually had the power steering disconnected while the kicker is running and steer with the bow mount.