After much deliberation, I decided to go with a Sportsman II power pole. I have heard so many bad things about the Talon. I basically had all weekend to do it, so I started off by installing the pump on Saturday. Not being in any hurry, I would say that took about an hour and a half. I had two friends come over on Sunday to help me put the bracket and shim on the jack plate. I was really concerned about holding the motor upright but with the skeg on a 2 x 6, it was no problem whatsoever. Ran the hydraulic lines to the pump and then connected the electrical. I put an inline on/off power switch just in case. After securing all of the hydraulic and electrical lines with tie-wraps, I was ready to try it out. Purged the pump and programmed the remotes. I would say that I put about 5 hours of work in today. I will have to wait until this CRAPPY weather goes away before I can actually use it on the water.

I can honestly say that this was one of the best installations I have experienced as far as working on my boat. The package came with everything I needed to put this all together. One of the brass compression nuts disappeared off of the pump. This was not Power Pole's fault. The only problem was that it was 5/16", which is not common. After wasting my time at Home Depot, I went to ACE Hardware and picked one up.

I'll keep people posted.

Any auto parts stores should have had more than one of those. They are very commonly used on brake lines and some other stuff automotive.

Good to know you got that installed easily though. It's more intimidating than anything, but isn't much to it at all.

This ACE Hardware seems to have a lot of the items I can't find at Home Depot and Lowes. I had bought some things earlier in the week that I wound up not needing. I decided to kill two birds with one stone, bring those other items back and see if they had the 5/16" compression nuts. If they hadn't I would have gone to Hi-Lo or Autozone.

I was really glad that the one part that I lost wasn't something that was custom made for Power Pole that you could only get online from a store in Australia.

Just FYI ...as a professional in the field. I do t consider Auto zone a quality parts store.