New owner - trim and steering questions

[Jkwrangler08]

1987 184 DCB with 175 Mercury and a manual 5 1/2" jackplate. Motor is mounted in the top most hole on the plate. The plate bolts are centered in the slots.

Got the boat out on the water last weekend. Everything I read stated full down trim to get on plane. Boat came up on plane fine. The motor seemed to be a little low in the water but otherwise was fine. When I got the boat back home I started looking more at the motor trim.. My first question is when I trim the motor all the way down, I figured it would mostly be inline, or parallel with the transom. The motor appears to me to be over rotated to where the prop is pointed more towards the ground than straight back from the boat. There are no motor stop pins (not sure what the name of those are) in any of the holes on the motor. Am I missing something here? Previous owner ran it this way for 7 years.

Second question. There is no trim tab. I had to replace the dual steering cables. In doing so I checked that the motor turned freely without cables. New cables in and the steering is very light. when I got on the water, I noticed as I got up on plane and running about 30mph, the steering was very heavy. It seemed a little better turning to the left than the right but not much. is this due to the lack of a trim tab? I have one on order and it will be here next week.

I have found this forum to be a wealth of info and actually helped me decide to pick up this boat. thanks

[pmgoffjr]

You need to lube your cables, NEVER with grease. If some knucklehead did put grease on them, soak them down with penetrating oil and keep going until you get all the grease out and the cable nice and smooth. Messy but works.
Your trim angle is correct. Nothing to change.
Steering pull is normal, that's torque from the prop. If/when you get to 100% throttle and 100% positive trim you'll get a good pull to the right, again it's normal.

[Jkwrangler08]

Thanks Pat!

I did lube the new cables when I put them in and cleaned out the steering
tube.

[pmgoffjr]

Are they stiff with the boat on the trailer? Or just running?

[Jkwrangler08]

Only when running up on plane.

[pmgoffjr]

Ok, good.
After you've run it a while, we can review your setup. Go catch some fishies.

[Jkwrangler08]

Thanks Pat!