Thankfully I'm a procrastinator and never installed this. Bought a bigger motor recently that came with a Panther tilt and trim unit I want to use instead. The Panther has BIA standard outboard holes while that jackplate was a smaller square pattern. The motor I got is a longshaft and I will be mounting on a 15" transom flatbottom though so I am going to install the Panther to the transom and then create a riser for the motor out of aluminum angle that will attach to the Panther motor bracket.

The hiccup I have with the Panther is that my transom has a hat section stiffener that runs horizontally across it and is right in the way of where the lower bolts need to go. In theory I could mount the unit 2-3 inches lower and miss it, however, the unit has 7" of setback so I will actually be needing to raise the motor as much as possible take advantage of that. I'm thinking about lining up the bottom fastener holes right in the middle of the hat section and bolting up through them. I don't think that will compromise the strength of the stiffener and I would add a fender washer on top of it to distribute the load of it since its hollow (however the bottom bolts should not see much if any tension imo).

My options are kind of limited so I will likely do this no matter what but still wondering if anyone had any comments? To be honest tapping into the stiffener doesn't worry me as much as having the top bolts too near to top edge. Best I can tell is the hole will be totally under the lip but the washer may catch on it a bit.

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