Smooth Ride Transom Saver - 31" to 40" Long - Aluminum and Stainless Steel

Video Transcript for Jif Marine Comfort Ride Transom Saver Review

Hey everybody, Ryan here at etrailer. Today we're gonna be checking out the line of Jif Marine Transom Savers. Now, these transom savers are really simple components but, they really do help out a ton whenever you're pulling your boat down the road. What they're gonna do is help support your motor. That way, all that weight isn't bouncing around on your boat's transom. It's really important to keep your transom in good shape.

You know, that's obviously where it's holding your motor on. And so it's critical that that stays, in good condition. And a transom is one of them things you really don't wanna have to deal with. You know, it's, a lot of times if you get cracks in 'em or they rot out, whatever the case may be, get soft on ya. At times it's expensive defects, and, time-consuming, need a lot of special tools, so, to help reduce the risk of causing your transom to prematurely fail, you can use one of these savers.

And what's this is gonna do is kind of stop your motor from bouncing all over the place whenever you're pulling, you know, pulling it down the road to the boat ramp or storage, whatever the case may be. But these outboards on here typically, you know If you got relatively small boats and pretty heavy motors. Especially nowadays, these, you know, larger four-stroke motors have a little more weight to 'em than the older two strokes. They're getting more and more popular. So it's important to keep this thing braced and prevent it from bouncing around.

So, to give you an example of that today we have our motor trimmed up, which is great, it helps out a little bit, you know, it helps get the weight of the motor, you know, more towards the front of the boat over the center of the transom, but that's only gonna do so much. So, even if I just kinda grab our motor and I'm barely putting any pressure on this. So imagine if you're on 50 hitting potholes. You know, you can see it just really work in that transom. I don't wanna do it too much, but you know, there's nothing holding this.

This is kinda flapping around and, something like this is going to prevent that from happening and save you a lot of time. So, one thing that is pretty nice about the setup here is there's actually a spring inside of this sleeve in between your two adjustment pins here, your pin and your bolt. And what that's gonna do is give you a little bit of cushion, okay So this isn't just one solid firm piece. The spring is tight. So it stays hard unless you really hit a big bump or something like that. So just to kinda give you a visual let's say, if we put this on our trailer, which we're acting like the wall is and put a little downward pressure on it. It takes some, pressure to move it. But you can see it has some give there, and some movement. So it's just gonna, you know, provide with a little more of a smooth ride and won't allow everything to be so rigid and firm. So the little feet here that go around the lower unit are made from rubber. It's relatively forgiving, so it'll kinda absorb some shock and vibration. And you're not gonna have to worry about these scratching up your lower unit, or, you know, really digging into the casing or anything like that so, not much to worry about there, you know, this is gonna stay in place help hold onto that motor and do a good job of it. So I went ahead and put our transom saver in place, and I just kinda wanna do a comparison here with this in place versus when it's not in place. So, if I apply the same amount of pressure, don't get me wrong, there's still a little bit of movement. But the majority of it, is actually, in our transom saver itself. So you can see it kinda rebounding in and out from the spring that's in there. And so most of that energy, when you are hitting bumps, is getting transferred through the saver onto the trailer where, it's not that big of a deal, if that moves around a little bit Same thing if I try to pull it out, it comes up this strap here, it's pretty thick actually. And same deal. Little bit of movement there but it's mostly in the transom saver itself, so it does a pretty good job of taking some of that strain off the transom. And, although it's not perfect, it's definitely an improvement. So one of the big questions that we get asked with these is what size transom saver do you actually need And that's because they are available in multiple different lengths. And there's a pretty broad spectrum within those lengths, if that makes sense. And one quick way to at least kinda get you in the ballpark and get you close, it's just to take a quick measurement. And so what you would do is tilt your motor up to where you want it. Usually something like this is pretty normal. And you would measure from either the roller, if you had if your trailer has a roller on the back of it, or measure it from the frame itself, kinda go at your angle and measure to the edge of your lower unit here. And, that'll get you in the ballpark, like I said. Most of the lengths are pretty adjustable. So, find one that's kinda in the middle of your measurement if you can, and that'll give you a little bit of wiggle room, not only in, but out as well, and probably give you the best results. So the transom saver's gonna work with pretty much any size outboard motor. Generally speaking. Today, we have it on a 115. But you could use this on a 9-9 all the way up to 250, or possibly more so. As long as you have a spot to connect it to your trailer and to the lower unit, it'll do its job and help support it. One thing I do wanna mention, not a probably a super common scenario, but something to think about is if you have a jack plate or something like that which, brings your motor up a little bit higher something you need to think about is where your motor sits when it's on the trailer. So, if it's way up here say your lower unit is sitting up here, you know, think about the angle from where this connects to the trailer. You know, it might be too steep of an angle and hit the bottom of your boat, whatever the case may be. Just something I wanted to mention. I know everyone has a little bit different set up. And so it's worth thinking about. Another thing too. My boat, I actually have an outboard jet conversion on it. Okay, so I don't have this V-shape here on the lower unit or what where would be the lower unit. I have a rounded outboard jet and so, a saver like this really isn't optimal, it really aint a whole, a lot of places to kinda grab onto. So if that's your case, it's something to think about as well. I know it's kind of an, not a super common situation but people definitely run across that and, something just to look into. Something I do wanna mention. This part here that fits around our roller is going to be three inches wide. That's pretty common size. Most of these rollers are pretty generic. And so chances are pretty good this will work out with your, setup. If your trailer doesn't have a roller like this you can always pick one up here at etrailer, and put one on there. Or you can mount this up a different way as well. It actually comes with this little bracket. And what you can do is pull this bolt out remove this a U-shaped piece that goes over the roller, and simply bolt this to the trailer frame itself, all right So this would be bolted there, like so, and then this end would bolt to it. And that would be your attachment point there. So, regardless if your trailer has a roller or not you're gonna have a way to give you a connection point whether it be going around the roller, or directly to the trailer frame itself. The transom saver is gonna be made from aluminum as well as stainless steel. So, the part here is, feels like a cast aluminum. It's pretty solid, actually. There's nothing hollow about it. But then we're gonna have an aluminum square sleeve, that runs down. And this part here that goes inside of the aluminum that's your stainless. Part down there's also aluminum casting but, I think it's kind of a cool design for, one, you're not gonna get, you know, any rust or anything like that going on. But, I feel like whenever you're going down the road the aluminum is supporting this and it's kind of taking in those light vibrations almost. But when you get some serious weight going on and hitting some serious bumps, it's going to take that energy, apply it down here. This is where the spring is inside, and push down on the stainless itself. So, when you really need it that stainless is gonna be there, be solid. But kinda in just that resting position I feel like the weight on this maybe a little more forgiving, and should work out well, whether you're going slow, fast, or anything in between. So I figured we'd hook up to our tow vehicle and just kinda run our boat around through our test course. So over some bumps, and a little bit of evasive maneuvering there and see how it does. Once we kinda get going over the bumps, you do see the motor moving a little bit and that's okay. But for the most part, it looks like our transom saver is doing the job. If you look, you really don't see any flex or movement at all on the transom. And, that's the, potential issue, that this transom saver is resolving. Without that being there, you could just tell that that motor moving up and down would really put some strain on the transom. So, with the saver being in place, something we're not gonna really have to worry about too much. When we kinda start doing a little bit of evasive maneuvering, even on pretty much flat ground, you can tell that it's still supporting everything nicely. You know, the motor wants to kinda shift one side or the other, and up and down and the saver's kinda eliminating that, you know, gives it that solid attachment point to keep everything in place. So at the end of the day, if you trail your boat a transom saver's almost a must have. You know, it's going to really help keep your transom and everything else in good shape. That way you can be out on the water doing what you enjoy, as opposed to in the repair shop trying to get your boat fixed up. But with all that being said, that will finish up our look at of the line of Jif Marine Transom Savers..