Longer shaft for GT?

[recout]

Ok I have a GT and was thinking about making a longer shaft for my GT. I'm on the tall side(6'7) and the stock shaft feels short by 3 to 4 in. Also was thinking about putting the controls behind my elbow like on my Excal. I run my GT with a 15WOT and was thinking if the controls were behind my elbow it would feel better balanced like on my excal. My only issue I see is the arm cuff holds on the mount for the unit. I have been using a hip mount bag but don't think I would like it in the summer..... Has anyone ever made a new shaft for a GT. Any ideas on the how to get the mount on the shaft for the unit since i will be moving the arm cuff?

 

[synthnut]

I've done something similar to what you want to do , except I did it with an older model Sovereign ....I soon found out that in order to have a somewhat balanced unit I had to go so far back with the contol box that it was not really worth the effort ....If you want to try it , I'm sure you know the newer Sov's have a strange way of mounting the control box and the arm cuff all in one .....The only thing I could suggest would be to cut the arm cuff section off of the mount , and the you could mount the box wherever you wanted to ......Then just purchase an addition arm cuff , like an inexpensive Whites arm cuff and put it in front of the Sov mount that you just cut ..... This is ONLY if you are hell bent on making this happen , but as I said earlier , I did it with an older Sov control box , and it did NOT balance all that well .... It surely did keep the control box high and dry though !!....VERY HIGH !!.... LOL !!.... Jim

 

[deepdiger60]

I,am 6.6 tall and have no problem with my unit hip mounted all year i took off the control box mount on the arm cuff there is really nothing left on the rods completely stripped down , just the arm cuff, grip handle and the coil ,s i do fields and woods every thing is in a carpenters utility belt with a few pouches to spare , i even put the swingy thing on what little weight there is ? on the shaft , i can swing that shaft all day in fields with a 15WOT or my S-12 .Once hip mounted i could never go back to all that weight by mounting the box back on the rod,s plus the balance is prefect they way i have it set up ..Jim

 

[Critterhunter]

I believe somebody sells an extension that fits on the back of the shaft and allows you to mount the control box behind the elbow.

You could also buy a Whites Tall Man carbon riber lower rod to make things longer.

I built a custom light weight shaft for my GT using a Whites tall man carbon fiber lower shaft. For the top shaft I used the inner aluminum tube (it's lighter grade than Minelab's) from an Unger window cleaning extension pole at Home Depot or Lowes. Since the Whites tall man lower rod is longer I was also able to cut the new upper shaft shorter to save even more weight. I used an aluminum bike end bar for my hand grip as I never liked the stock one and this one is lighter. Now, for an arm cup I used a Whites "heavy duty" arm cup off their site because the stock GT arm cup is real heavy.

As for the control box mounting, look at the clip and you'll see that it's two pieces riveted together. I drilled out the rivet(s) to seperate them. You only need the one that the box clips to. I then riveted this piece to the shaft. Works like a charm with no issues. All that combined with me running a lipo battery and using no coil cover but instead spray on bed liner on the coil has saved me a ton of weight. A pound and a half if I remember right.

The beauty of all this too is that I put the original shaft back together to use as my water rig. You want a strong shaft for water hunting and the original shaft sure is. The stock GT arm cup will mount without the box clip brackets. Since I use the 12x10 on land I have the 10" Tornado on my water rig, so in order to go water hunting I just swap the control box over to my hip mount bag. Before putting it in the bag I put a plastic bag around it with a hole poked through for the coil and headphone cables. I put a rubber band around the bag at the coil cable to seal that better, and I keep the ziplock bag zip closed on the face plate to seal that end. I hang it around my kneck and slung under my left arm. With this setup my GT would probably survive a splash from a bad wave. I hunt lake Erie so I don't have to worry about the waves as much as some on the oceans.

 

[Critterhunter]

Here's a link to my build thread for my light weight GT, which might contain further info about the box clip and stuff you were asking about...

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?21,1164138,page=1

 

[Tin Fin]

Critter... that was a good read - took a while for me to get through it all.. but did. Did you stop working on it after that, or have you made other mods since? A lot of good ideas in that string of posts. Would like to see what else you have done since the last posting, unless you haven't made any other changes since then.

 

[Critterhunter]

Nothing else to do to it. I did remove the detector stand and instead use rubber feet on the control box to keep the control box from resting completely on the ground. My GT is as light as it can get short of using a carbon fiber upper shaft. Makes hunts much more enjoyable. I tried hip mounting the control box before building my light weight unit and I didn't like that.