MNshortliner

Sorry, I do have a great slo mo video from my iPhone but when I upload it to YouTube it runs at normal speed. But here is that same video at speed. So are you saying my pull should be a little shorter and my trasition be quicker? Sometimes skiing 35 I really notice the edge change is a flick rather than a roll.

Ok thanks @Horton Need some help cleaning up my 2 and 4. And maybe other stuff but if I have an ok 2 Then my 3 gets me to 4. Haha, that sounds funny.

Watching the vid of Regina’s “Crazy” 39 pass... Her 1,3,5 side she comes out around the buoy and doesn’t complete the turn ,the ski stands up and she has to regroup, brings the ski back down and gets back to the work zone to make it back to 2,4,6. That is a lot for just one buoy. I am experiencing the same thing but on my 2,4,6 side I am also RFF, I believe Regina is RFF. I think I am rushing the turn some or just not being patient enough. I am skiing -38 34mph. What is the most common fix for wheelies just after getting your hand back on the handle. And how do you post a vid instead of using Dropbox or others. The quality of the vids really diminish doing that.

I have all the weight total numbers for removed parts. Truck lid-18 Trunk floor-18 Trunk back panel with pockets-8 Seat back rest-38 Old floor and misc.-10 Gas tank-38 I am going to court 5 gallons of gas-40 Difference in new platform-25 So that totals 195# removed behind the motor. The new floor is 10 The new back panel is 5 The new side panels are a lot lighter than the old but are a wash as far as weight lost behind the motor. So all said and done 180# lighter all behind the motor coupled with the extra weight of the gas tank as far forward in the bow as possible really changes the attitude of the wake and the boat in general. Driving the boat, it feels very light and very responsive. But I don’t pull many people so it is hard to say if tracking is better or worse than before. On another note I skied my first 38 off 34mph pass today. No video evidence but it felt great and can’t wait to do some more skiing and try it again.

@DavidN you are correct the O.D. of the stock exhaust ports are close to 5 1/2”. The rubber fitting are made for the clay pipe that has 1” thick walls. The sticker on it said 4”x4”. It is a clay pipe to pvc coupling. I was pretty happy with how much to tamed down the exhaust but I will check it out again tomorrow.

Just wow!!!

Did this tonight. Thanks for all the tips/how to posts. The rubber is the 4” clay to 4” pipe. And the white pvc is 4” to 3” elbows. I cut off the flange that the 3” pvc pipe would go into and it makes for a fairly clean sweeping 90* turn. And just about the right clearance above the water. Right now I only have it clamped with the 2 hose clamps on each side but the rubber fitting took a little tapping and stretching to slide on my stock exhaust ports with flappers. I made sure the flappers still open 3/4 of the way. But for $10 per piece it is a great and easy mod. $40 all in. I did drill a 3/16” relief hole in the top of the 90. First impressions of it: From the boat hard to say if it is quieter or not. From a skiers perspective it was way quieter. I’m sure from shore it has to be a big difference.

@cr1 I didn’t have a teak platform and at the time my labor was cheap. I did wrap it with the EVA so if I didn’t tell you it was aluminum you would have never known. It isn’t any harder getting up on this platform than a water level one right now, but ask me in 20 years and I might have a different answer for you. I have not skied any other newer boats so I don’t really have anything to compare it to but it is absolutely a non factor while skiing in the course. @ReallyGottaSki nice Supreme. What year is that one. My neighbor just bought a ‘91 but I have not skied it yet.

@MISkier Thanks, yea I can tell you that leg never gets cold. Haha

This is a video of myself 34 mph 35 off. https://www.dropbox.com/s/pq3f4cf1ougcxgm/trim.617103AE-C498-4F85-BD16-463F7F0278F4.MOV?dl=0

I will have to post a ski video. @DavidN Great looking Response, I’ve always loved red boats. What did you do to drop some weight? I did look through some of @DW builds from Malibucrew. He will have to chime in on tracking also. Don’t know why it would get worse as the rope connects right above the three tracking fins. The boat feels like it has a very good “Response” while driving. @BlueSki I only skied it about 10 times last fall but I do remember a hard bump at 32 but it wasn’t very big. Now it barely feels like there is a wake. The only time I feel my ski jump at the wake is if I hit it flat after dropping into the trough. But there is almost no trough now also. @escmanaze i really like how easy putting gas in this is now. I siphon my gas into all the boats. Put a towel down, put the can on the towel, put the hose in, squeeze the can, and just sit there for a minute. @vtmecheng like @robmollysilverlake said this boat only gets used from about 7 to 8:30 in the mornings. Most of the time we literally have the lake to ourselves, but if you did come onto some rollers at 5mph or less you might get a free boat wash.

Thanks everyone for the nice comments. @skihacker I did think about how to do some racks but unless we have about 4 people skiing I don’t think they would save that much space. But if there was a fairly simple way to make some I might be interested. But there is not much to mount something like that to either. I will report back in the next couple days and see how much weight was actually dropped. I still haven’t weighed the gas tank so will get to that. But I love all the extra room and it’s barely a step over the back transom to get to the platform. @UWSkier this boat was bare bones, it didn’t even come with a stereo. @MISkier whenever you’re in the neighborhood.

So the last thing that needed to be done is the floor and trim panels. I wanted to go clean, simple, and wanted it to look somewhat factory finished. For the floor I used the same aluminum that I used for the platform. The pieces are just hooked together and the carpet is screwed on. No welding, no glue, and I had a couple of pieces of grey carpet so I used the one that matched the best. The original floor piece was cracked when I bought the boat and only long enough to go just under the backrest of the trunk. This is the only thing that was heavier than the original but still pretty light weight. The factory side panels had a nice look to them and a nice badge, so I wanted to stick with that theme. Stock side panel. I used pvc board 3/8” think from Lowe’s. Just think enough for the 3/8” stainless staples I use to attach upholstery. This pvc board is lighter and more flexible then hdpe board and worked perfect for what I wanted. Ripped to size, cut to shape, and routered the edges. I held them up in place, clamped them and marked all existing holes so I didn’t have to drill new holes in the fiberglass. Then drilled them out and used star nuts for a fastenerless finish. Finished side pieces. In this pic the two colors look very different but in person they are very close color wise. One shade different. A little personal touch. Rear panel is just a flat piece that bends nicely with the curve of the boat. I couldn’t really come up with a way to use hidden fasteners so just used screws. Big plain vinyl pieces on boats are boring so have to add a little more personality. Have used this boat all summer and I absolutely love it.

@Zman yes I did put a strap on the back of the tank. I guess that pic was from earlier this winter. It’s not really heavy duty but I think it should work just good enough. Here you can also see the fuel level in the tank. Almost full.

Yes I did have safety somewhat on my mind when I was thinking about putting the tank up front. This was the standard location in closed bow boats for a long time. I believe the reason for not still having them up there is mainly for storage reasons. How the tank was placed put the fill neck almost directly in the middle of the bow of the boat. The “hood” is almost 4” thick in that location. 3/8” think fiberglass on the top deck, 3” of foam for flotation, and about a 3/16” think unfinished fiberglass on the underside. I cut my hole for the new gas cap in the hood then drilled out about a 6” hole in the unfinished glass underneath. Cut away all the foam and have about an 8” filler neck hose attaching the cap to the tank. I put the vent/overflow on the side of the boat. Those are my pet fish. I did add another blower in the bow but only run it for a minute when I first get to the boat for the day. Then I run my regular blower for 2-3 minutes before starting. A 3 1/2” hole was drilled right in front of the stock vent tubes for the added vent tube/hose and it is wired to an independent switch. The wire harness for the fuel pump was about 24” short so it was added to with in line splices. New fuel hose to the motor also. I have never smelled any gas fumes under the bow and I can easily see the fuel level in the tank just looking at it. The fuel gauge still works as it should. I plugged the gas and vent holes with plugs, still have to add some striping the the black one. I added the red stripe around the boat. I like colors and couldn’t have just a black and white boat. I will be wrapping this thing up tomorrow.

@DavidN, very nicely done. You are a better man than I.

@TEL are the bindings on the unused ski also unused? If they are not used your boot may just be stiffer, there for, more responsive to your ski until they get broken in.

Yes I will be getting to it. I still need to take a few more pics that I don’t have of the finished product.

So with the theme of dropping weight, moving around the swim platform is ridiculously heavy. I mean holy crap after 20+ years of ski boat building in the new age you think they would do a lightweight platform. The platform sits behind the hull and as far as a leverage aspect is more important than weight loss inside the boat. With that, I like working with aluminum, so an all aluminum platform only makes sense to me. The aluminum I used is 1 1/8” x 6”. It is the same stuff that is used for outside bleachers and joins/hooks together to make it very strong and light weight. Got the size I wanted and cut out the pieces to shape. Put a 1” tubing frame around the whole outside. The bent tube that is closest to the boat was kerf cut every about 6” to get a nice radius to match the fiberglass hull. Then had to weld a piece of flat stock on where the brackets were going to attach. Put the bracket on the boat, mark, drill, and bolt brackets on. The aluminum plank had the no slip ribs/textured top and I was going to wrap the platform with EVA foam so I did knock those down with a sanding disk/grinder somewhat. Also put plastic cap inserts into the ends of the 1” tubing so there was no exposed sharp metal edges. Wrapped the whole thing with EVA foam I got from eBay for fairly cheap. Had to notch the corners get get them to wrap around the corners nicely. It’s not perfect but I am happy with it. The foam had sticky back on it but I was not going to rely only on that to keep it attached to the platform. 3/4” strips of aluminum pop riveted around the whole perimeter of the platform hold it on nicely. Finished product. I love it. Original platform was 50#. New platform is 25#. Platform never really gets soaked as it sits about 6” above the waterline.

So after getting measurements for how much room there was in the nose I started looking at fuel tanks online. I decided on a 12x10x32, 13 gallon tank. When we go out skiing 90% of the time it is 2 skiers and between 2 sets each we use about 6 gallons total. I wanted something that wasn’t going to take up the whole bow area and something that was going to offset the driver a little bit, also wanted it as far forward as possible. So I cut the appropriate size hole in the new tank where I wanted it, and made a HDPE backing plate ring to fit inside the tank so the stainless screws had something to bite into. The fuel pump in my boat is the in tank bucket style assembly and quite large but it worked out really good. I put it in the rear part on the tank so when on plane the deepest part of the tank would be at the pump to pick up the most gas possible. The old tank was only 8” deep and the new tank was 13 inches so the bucket style fuel pump assembly would not reach the bottom of the tank. This is a stock fuel pump assembly. I had to take apart mine and extend the arms where the springs were. I welded on new stainless 3/8” tubing to extend the fuel pumps down another 4” or so and did replace the filter socks at this time. The lock washers rest on my welds and the springs push on the lock washers to obtain about the same spring pressure and travel as before.

Let me just say, this was my last winter project, it is done, this is just my build, wanting to share what I did, some like to see boat projects just for fun. So starting out thinking about the project, I had a number in mind of 250. That’s how much weight I thought I could get rid of all behind the motor. I have always skied with 3/8 of a tank or less to get an optimal wake and don’t have unnecessary equipment in the boat. The ski boat is used 100% for slalom skiing so no need for other gear. So I got down to tank removal and the gas gauge said under 1/4 tank. When I disconnected the hoses and took the hold down brackets out the tank was still very heavy. We got it out of the boat and took about 8 gallons of gas out of the tank. So taking out the trunk/tank the side panels were not going to work how they were stock so those had to come out also. Getting measurements for what kind of gas tank I was going to be looking for. Also those were the 2 sand bags that had to be in the nose to get a little better wake. Disclosure, I am going to drag this out for about a week or so. Haha

Don’t know why they designed it this way but they sure stuck with it, for like 15 years.

Bought a 2012 RCB last fall and wanted to change up a few things. Kind of ridiculous that a ski boat would need 100# of extra weight in the nose to get a better wake, the lack of floor space kind of sucked. With two skier’s gear not much room for moving around and hated stepping over the rear trunk to get to the platform. And why would they have that said trunk open forward so you can only access it from the platform? So the wheels started turning and the fiberglass in the rear was minimal compared to other boats with “built in” gas tanks or rear trunks and I was bored and needed a project. A pic before the project started. My son skiing 28 mph. And you can see a ski barely fits from the driver seat to the backrest of the trunk. So started taking out all of the upholstery and panels.

I’ve been meaning to do a thread on what/ how I did, just haven’t gotten around to do it. I upgraded from a ‘96 Prostar but the Prostar’s wake was better than my new Malibu’s wake at 28 mph. @skimtb it is a 17” step over the back wall to the platform.