jpwhit

It's a PCM EX343 5.7L

It's not a problem getting the revised part. It's readily available for a reasonable price, I just have to have the updated ECM calibration files for it to work properly. Like Mastercraft, the actual electronic sensor module is made by a 3rd party and could be replaced independently if it could be acquired. But, this particular sensor is made by Wabash. But Wabash is no longer in business and the sensor module is no longer available through any electronic supply houses. I assume this is likely the reason for there being a revised "A" part with different characteristics.

Our ski club has a 2012 Nautique 200 and the Pedal Position Sensor has failed. It's PCM part number R119005, but that part has been replaced by R119005A. With the revised "A" part the ECM has to be reflashed with new calibration file(s). The Nautique dealer within driving distance of us can't get us in for many weeks. I have Diacom and am 100% comfortable flashing the ECM, I just need the appropriate calibration file(s). I'm hoping someone here can help our club out by sending me the required calibration file(s). Trying to avoid missing the end of our season as the weather is closing in us. We normally ski through most of November. If someone has the file(s), can you send them to john dot whitfield at gmail dot com. If the file is too big to be sent as an email attachment, I'm happy to provide a google drive link such that the file(s) can be uploaded to my google drive. Thanks in advance.

@skibug, I care about the zoom because the more optical zoom the more detail you can see. I've found that with better detail myself and folks I have providing video coaching have been able to see and identify more complete advice on how to improve. I only care about angle to the extent that as you zoom in more, the angle matters more and more to keep the skier fully in frame. On quality of the video, what I see looking at the native video is completely smooth and much more detailed than what is reflected on YouTube. YouTube seems to be the only option for embedding a video in this forum. When I first uploaded the video to YouTube it looked descent. Now it looks terrible. Not much I can do about that as far as I'm aware. That's completely under YouTube's control.

If you're happy with that wide of a camera angle, then you're right you're not going to have an issue. But look at where the skier is in those last 2 pictures relative to the center of the frame. I'm using at least 3x the zoom of those pictures. At that zoom, skier would be out of the frame.

I have a Canon 5D M3 DSLR and I did a fair amount of experimentation with it. Of course, the video quality itself is fantastic, but the weight of my camera made it unworkable. I don't think the durability of the camera is a concern, the issue is more the mount itself. When the skier falls with a heavily loaded rope, the mount takes a huge hit. The more weight on the mount, the more stress it takes. I did have to repair a fair amount of mount damage during my experimentation with the DSLR. But my DSLR is much heavier, so hard to say with yours. There is also little day to day practical matters that you may or may not care about. For example, the more the camera weights, the more issues you have with the alignment of the camera shifting each time a skier falls. With my setup, I often record more than a hundred passes a week across the club members. So little practical issues become much bigger issues than if you record a handful of passes a month. With the optical zoom of that camera, and the weight, I think you may end up fairly frustrated with the Orbit's ability to keep skier in frame. But it sounds like you have everything, so seems like you have nothing to lose by experimenting with it.

Not sure my input is going to help you with a ready-made solution, but I had the same goal of having a fairly zoomed in video recording solution. I wasn't satisfied with what I could find off the shelf and ended up building a semi-custom solution. But some of the things I figured out may help. I played around with both the Orbit and Wakeye mounts in conjunctions with phones, GoPro's, and other types of video cameras. For mounts, when you use a camera that can optically zoom into the skier, I found the Wakeye mount to be far superior at keeping the skier in the frame. It allows the adjustment of the camera pivot point to be offset from the rope pivot point. This means the camera pivot angle isn't 1:1 relative to the rope angle. You can get more camera pivot as the skier gets out to the ball. With the Orbit mount, you just can't use as much camera zoom as you can with the Wakeye mount and consistently keep the skier in the frame. With that said, it would be nice if the Wakeye mount was little better in the durability department. In terms of cameras, I'll keep it simple. After a lot of testing, I found an old-style camcorder produced the best results by a wide margin IMO. Especially considering that in my solution, I took advantage of the camera's optical zoom to use different pre-set zooms based on rope lengths. And I'm not taking about an expensive camera. I just bought a used one off of ebay for about $30. What's important is that it's true 60fps or higher. For the GoPro, I was using a Hero 8 in my testing. And the digital zoom helped, but I always felt like the native fish-eye characteristics of the optics were too much of a negative. And yes, I'm aware you can turn off the fish-eye characteristics in the menus, but that is only so effective. For example, with the GoPro watching the gates, the optical distortion makes it look like the skier is going to miss the gate. And while that's not really that important, is the best way I can think to explain the distortion. On top of that, even with digital zoom, it just didn't compare well to a good old camcorder. So, the final setup I've been using for the last 3 seasons, is a standard Wakeye Mount, a cheap JVC 720p 60FPS camcorder, a custom-built GPS control electronics that automatically starts and stops the camera and controls the camera zoom, and automation software that I wrote that fully automates the process of post processing the video and uploading it to a cloud-based solution so I and the others in our club have easy access to our videos. It would be fairly easy to duplicate my setup sans the control electronics. Here's a picture of my setup. And here's a snippet of sample video of my opening pass at 34mph - 22 off. No coaching please, Terry Winter and I are fully aware of what I need to work on next from a coaching perspective :wink: And I just grabbed a video that was handy without trying to find my best effort. When you imbed a youtube video in the forum it shows it in a fairly small window. You'll get a better feeling for the video if you copy the link and look at it in youtube natively.

I think I'm going to make an offer on the one on onlyinboards.com just because people here have made it sound like the holy grail.... Can't let a really nice one like that slip through my fingers. You think 50% over asking price would get it?

@duffbeerisgood depending on the weight of your current boat, the wakes may not be that bad. A direct drive wake will also be a fairly different shape. I'd suggest you try actually skiing behind anything you consider just to make sure you're not surprised later. Good suggestions here on boat models by folks already. If you work on your own boat, you'll also be happy with a DD. By far the easiest boats to work on... The driving experience between a DD and outboard is also dramatically different. Don't let that freak you out if you've never driven one. With a little learning it gets to be very natural.

What are you skiing behind now so we have a reference for your current expectations?

@ScottScott, like @Horton I use the fuel management system and am extremely pleased with the accuracy. I think it's actually a great solution for the scenario of people adding 5 gallons at a time. I've also owned a Nautique 200 personally and I currently have partial ownership of a 200 at the ski club. I have a 2019 ProStar at my Lake House. I'd rather have the fuel level monitoring system on the ProStar. Yes, if you only look at the gauge, then you'll probably prefer the Nautique. If you learn how to use the Fuel Mgmt system on the ProStar, which includes looking at the fuel mgmt info and not just the gauge, you'll come to appreciate the value of that system.

That looks fantastic. I've spent a fair amount of time in Germany due to work. Mostly around the automotive industry locations. But also vacationing there too. Does the club offer a way for folks to ski there on holiday?

You're expecting someone to remember the details of a crash from 2 years ago?? I can't remember the details of crashes 2 weeks ago. Including the ones I have on video. And I had a big time OTF on video from a few weeks back....

I moved from dual full rubber boots to Reflex front, RTP rear 3 years ago. I'd never go back..... From the point of view of safety and performance. That was after 39 years of skiing dual boots. I did learn to ski on a RTP and skied that way for 6 years before going to dual boots. And if you're doing the math ... dang I'm getting old....

Yes, that's exactly what I did. I used the existing carpets as a pattern. On some of the smaller pieces I added SS snaps so they wouldn't move around. Larger pieces will tend to stay put on their own. Not that it's much work to put snaps on everything.

I've had boats with carpet, Sea Deck, and deckadence. Sea Deck would be my last choice.... If I were ordering a new boat, and had the option. I would order it with snap in carpets for resale reasons. Nothing looks and feels nicer IMO that nice new carpet. But I'd store the carpet and buy and install Deckadence myself for daily use. I've bought cut and installed Deckadence in two boats now and it's really a piece of cake.

That there is pretty funny ...... I'm in the "same boat" as @jpwhit.

Sounds like engine is going into limp mode. You need someone with DIACOM to read out the diagnostics info.

When my wife and I bought our Lake House 2 years ago, we faced the same boat choice dilemma. Like you, I grew up slalom skiing behind relatively inexpensive boats. To give you a little context. The first boat I owned was a 1997 Four Winns Horizon RS 180. By sheer luck, it ended up being a pretty good cross-over boat. I found out after owning it for years, that it was one of the few I/Os that was reviewed by Waterski magazine for course skiing and was deemed fairly adequate. When my daughter were early teens, we bought a portable course, I installed Perfect Pass, and we all learned to ski the course behind that boat. I also had a lightweight minimal tower on the boat, and it was a darn good wake board boat too. This was all pre-surfing. When my daughters went to UNC, they both skied on the waterski team and we joined a private ski club that had a Nautique 196. I sold the Four Winns and bought a Nautique 200. UNC went to Nationals all four years my girls skied there and that was a wonderful experience for them and for my wife and I getting to attend and watch some college tournaments. When we bought the lake house, I knew from our past experience that we weren't going to be happy with a crossover boat. I sold my 200 years earlier when my girls were no longer at home, and I was only skiing at the ski club. During the years when we owned the 200, we missed having a "big lake" boat. I used the 200 on the big lake some, but with the ease in which the open bow would take over water when we had more than 3-4 people, it really wasn't adequate. And surfing, wake boarding, air-chair, while doable, simply weren't good enough. Again, by sheer luck in timing, I ended up buying the lake house, a 2014 MasterCraft X25, and a 2019 Prostar at pre-pandemic prices. The X25 was a little rough and I've done a lot of work on it to get it into nice cosmetic and into 100% mechanical shape. But I saved a lot of money by fixing up the X25. I mention this because I ended up getting the 2 boats in the general range of cost you mentioned. Pandemic prices likely won't last forever.... I have absolutely no-regrets going the 2-boat route. Actually, the opposite, after going this route I couldn't imagine going the single boat route. When we're out at the slalom course at the big lake, we use the X25 sort of like a pontoon boat for people to hang out while others are skiing. I'm actually looking for an old pontoon boat right now that I can rebuild into a floating dock for the same purpose --- because I haven't figured out a way to install a fridge and gas grill on the X25 :)

I do think people progress faster if they pick one method and stay with it. The people I've seen jump around between getting up to full speed and then the next week shorten the rope at less than full speed do not seem to progress as well from what I've seen. For me personally, I had better luck with getting up to my max speed (34 mph) and then shortening the line. For reference I tend to get into 32 off at 34 these days. The ski rides and behaves differently at higher speeds. For context, I'm approaching 60 years old which adds to the challenge. But I'm still pretty physically active in many sports. I still MTB a lot and rode MTBs competitively for many years.

I described one approach, in an earlier post in this thread, as to a 100% definitive way to completely rule out an air leak. 30 gpm flow rate at the conditions you measured does not rule this out and suggests you're not considering what happens when even a small amount of air expands 10x under a vacuum. It displaces a high percentage of that 30 gpm with air. You measured 30 gpm without the high negative pressure on the suction side of the pump when the boat is running at speed with everything hooked up. Another approach is to close the sea valve and remove the raw water pump outlet hose and connect a vacuum pump and see if raw water pump through sea valve will hold a vacuum. I know this sound a tad extreme, but when you have a very elusive overheating issue its often that you're trying to find a somewhat rare and elusive cause. I work on a lot of boats and in two cases in the past with a cooling issue that folks couldn't figure out, this ended up being the cause. One was a hairline crack under the pipe clamp in one of the elbows for the strainer, the other was a hard to see crack in the transmission cooler.

I understand what you did now, and that won't rule out an air leak at any speed above idle. Air leaks almost always manifest into problems at higher engine RPMs. That's because even tiny amounts of air entering on the suction side turn into large bubble in the high negative pressure on the suction side of the pump at high RPM. Those large bubbles displace enough of the cooling water coming in to cause high temps.

I'll repeat my earlier comment that I think an air leak on the suction side of the pump is still a potential. I didn't really understand your earlier response where you implied you had run a test that ruled that out. Not sure I completely understood what you did, but from what I could understand it was unclear if it would rule out that possibility. Putting a hose over the transom to feed the raw water pump will not rule this out if you just ran it at idle. There is only enough negative pressure on the system at higher engine RPM. And if you bypassed the trans cooler and ran that boat at load you'd overheat the transmission. Also what's unclear. In your earlier post is sounded like it only overheats under load. You said at the end of the course it cools back down. But then in your later reply is did sound like it was overheating at idle.

I've worked on and fixed cooling problems with very similar symptoms and as others have already mentioned, air leaks in the vacuum side of the raw water loop will cause these kinds of issues. And finding these kind of air leaks can be challenging at times. They can be in places you really may not expect. One key sign that's always true with these air leaks is that they'll happen on the lake but not when the boat is connected to a hose. That's because the pressure from the hose turns what is normally a negative pressure on the suction side of the raw what pump to a positive pressure. A surefire way to determine if you have this problem, is to buy a 6" piece of clear rigid plastic tube that's the right diameter to fit inside the output hose of the raw water pump. You also need a small length of extra rubber hose the same size as the output side of the raw water pump. Disconnect the hose from the output of the raw water pump and insert the section of clear plastic tube into that hose and clamp it. Then take the piece of extra hose and connect it to the other side of the clear tube and to the output of the raw water pump and clamp both of those connections. Basically, you're putting an observation window into the output hose of the raw water pump. Now go run the boat in a lake, not on a water house. And run it under the conditions where you have the high temps. If the water you see in the clear tube is nice solid clear water with no air mixed in, then you don't have an air leak anywhere on the suction side of the raw pump. If you do have a leak, then you'll see bubbles or large amounts of air in the clear sections of hose. If you do have air, then it's just a matter of tracking down where it's entering. One trick is to pour water over every part of the suction section of the raw water loop and watch for the air / bubble to lessen in the clear tube. Another approach is to keep moving the clear tube further and further down the suction side of the raw water piping. But that often involves different diameter pieces of tube and hoses. The final approach is to just take everything apart on the suction side of raw water loop and just closely inspect everything. But it can be very hard to see hairline cracks in some parts.

Cam sensor is in the distributor.