Motorguide xi5 saltwater - 24v 80#

In the video you can see the head vibrating/shaking/turning left right constantly. It does this at all time when the prop is running and it is in water, but not out of water. It is worse at higher speeds and you can feel it in the back of the boat when at high speed. It is also fairly noisy. It has done this since I've had it. I thought that it wasn't mounted well enough, so I added a third bolt on each side and an extra rubber bushing under the far back edge. (I originally only used the existing holes.) There is no movement of the motor where its mounted to the boat. I have bought a new prop and I've tried rotating both props 180 degrees. This is a consistent problem. I have had the shaft checked and it is straight. Does anyone have any recommendations of anything to check, or see anything wrong with the mounting in the pictures?

Link to video

Maybe a motor armature that is out of balance, or if the speed is digital controlled, possibly a motor speed/torque difference

I've been out messing with it some more. With the motor down, if I pull back and forth pretty hard on the shaft, there is slight movement at the other end of the base. Less than 1/4". I think this is due to using two different rubber mounting deals. All I had. I'll go get some more and remount tomorrow, but do you think this could potentially be causing this movement? Doesn't seem to me that it would but guess I can remount it again and see.

There should be some movement or the TM would be too stiff to operate. I can see where a less than perfect mounting would cause some vibration, but not how it would cause the motor to swing back and forth.
Im suspecting a bad servo or control board in the control head. If you are really serious about fixing it, I would take it to a repair facility. We can guess all day here and get minimal results.

Have you checked to make sure the prop shaft is not bent?

Yes he did, in the original post.

Yea I took it to All Star Marine in Lewisville and the guy checked the shaft and told me I should add another bolt to the base. He wouldn't look at the video of what it was doing. I added the extra bolt on each side. Same problem. Going to take it off again and back over there to drop off. I didn't see any other motorguide repair centers close by. Its just a pain in the butt to take on and off since I'm having to run the bolts up from the bottom side. MG didn't design this thing to be the easiest to mount.

Looking at your pics the t/m appears to be very close to or touching the rub rail. As all of us know who run this t/m it spins very fast. Could the rub rail be the culprit causing the noise and vibration? My i5 is very quiet and I have not noticed any vibration.

OK, I'm confused now as to what problem the OP was posting about. The video shows the rolling motor oscillating from right to left and we don't know if the OP is doing that with the control. What the video shows is a far cry from a mechanical vibration, so which is it?

Mine was not that bad . I changed the prop and it made it better went to a 3 blade .

The shaft is about 1.25" from the rub rail. The motor vibrates left/right constantly. Worse at higher power. I do move it with the control but I don't oscillate it at all. Its not responsive enough to move it that fast. Several hundred per minute. I have changed the prop out and the shaft is not bent. Going to take it off and drop it off at All Star Marine in Lewisville.

Did you try it without a prop? Acts like the armature is out of balance??

It only does it when it's in the water.

I meant without a prop in the water?

I did not put the motor in the water without the prop. Should I? If it still does this in the water without the prop, what does it mean?