I bought this Bixpy motor four years ago when I was prototyping the pack canoes. Ultimately, I decided that the weight and the hassle just wasn’t a good fit for an ultralight, ultra-simple canoe, but fast forward to my current project, and the motor doesn’t seem quite as crazy paired with the fundamentally heavier and more complicated pedal drive system.
To attach the motor I bought this adapter which drops right into any kayak with the Mirage Drive mounting geometry, and I also built a rudder mount which I’ll show in the next video.
The adapter works great, giving the canoe smooth and crisp handling in forward and reverse. Of the two mounting options this one by far felt the best on the water.
Unfortunately, there’s a giant downside and that is that the motor sits deep and doesn’t kick up which could be a bad situation if you hit something hard enough. Bixby actually has a lower profile version of this for the newer motor but this is the older design. If I decide to stick with this concept, I’m probably going to build my own adapter with some type of shock absorption included so even if an unseen object does stop me I can reduce the shock to the frame a bit.
I’ll talk about about the rudder mount option tomorrow, and then after that I’ll throwup some speed comparisons.
___
This post was originally featured on our Instagram feed.
See the original post and discussion here.
