MCskiFreak

@THAN, @WISH, still around, I just havent had time for my own designs for awile. I went to work for a company that builds high end offshore boats and have been kept very busy with some new product designs. The ski boat is something that I really want to do and would love to be able to someday build a company around. Wish is right about there being some limit as to how small a boat can be and still accomidate all of the things that are needed to have a good ski boat. It may turn out to be a good thing that I took the job that I did do to some of the research I have been involved with as of late dealing with stepped hull designs which may be aplicable to a ski boat hull. As far as the new Prostar in March they were testing boats in LA, but the intro of the X-10 and delay of the X-Star pushed back the Prostar project. There has been a shake up in management at MC, so hopefully the new President, and new VP of Engineering will be slalom guys.

Im on my second season with the same set of Radars and they are hands down the best glove I have ever had. Perfect fit for me and are holding up well.

A router and a bit of HDPE and you could have the same thing in a few minutes...

The current towers are considerably heavier. A zft3 loaded with speakers is nearly 200lb. Mini is about 80 iirc.

@GAJ0004 Ilmor has been involved with the high performance offshore industry for a few years now. The engines are based off of the Viper V-10 block, and they have developed their own drive as well. Several of the customers at the company I'm currently working for are huge fans of the Ilmor package. The version in the picture is their 710hp variant.

@shaneh the whole ilmor program has been great for MasterCraft. The engineers like them better, the dealers like them better, and most of the owners seem to like them better. @GAJ0004 ilmor has a much better engine program than either PCM or Indmar imo. Due to their racing, and offshore background they have far more engineering resources when compared to the other inboard mfg. The MV8's have been going into a lot of very high end non water sports boats since they were introduced and have had great success.

@ryno, some of the first boats to get the wedge were not properly reinforced at the mounting locations and when people took off on high speed runs and left it down the wedge could cause some major damage. That was addressed on subsequent models with reinforcements to the hull and different wedge designs.

@Ryno I dont know if you have ever skied a 2001 at 15 and 22 off but its wake is enormous. The x7 will be an awesome boat, the x5 is just a 95-97 Prostar 190 hull with ballast, tower, and different graphics.

I hope the stealth boots are lighter than the prototypes, those things were fricking heavy!

@lpskier, even if the association president is not giving the opinion of the association and just his own odds are trying to challenge him are going to result in unfavorable results. Even though my father and my ski partners father are association presidents for 2 of the 3 lake associations we still had plenty to contend with even with most of those 2 associations being in favor of us having the course.

Presenting it as a good addition to the lake is the most important thing that you can do. If you have any avid fishermen in your group of skiers that may also work to your advantage as far as showing that you do care about others use of the lake. If the fishermen are a bunch of hot heads, in my experience some are very adament about no one else should be able to use the water, not being drawn into a public argument with them.

Probably not, but I'm still young and dumb. Over the last year I have gotten to know Ron Tanis, used to run the WSM tests in the early 90's, pretty well and I think he could be an invaluable resource if we were to do something like what has been mentioned.

@DW if a true boat test review could be organised that would be great! I have plenty of contacts within the industry and I'm sure that there are others on this site that may have contacts with the few companies that I do not. If @Horton feels that it is worth while to start the ball rolling I would be more than willing to do some talking with the contacts that I have. There are more than enough qualified engineers on this site to put together a test team that could put together useful data about the boats to make it useful to the site, its users, the boat companies, and the public in general.

MSU is still on the river at the Lansing Boat Club, just put in the course last week.

It is simply a flow meter with a gauge that allows you to keep track of real time fuel usage. They are 6 or $700. www.flowscan.com

You should also consider the prostar 195. It uses jump seats in the front and probably has the deepest freeboard of the smaller ob non crossover boats.

If you look at their reputation for building bulletproof packages in the offshore community, I think it speaks volumes. My current employer (Skater Powerboats) loves them in their boats for customers that want a bulletproof product that has a long service life.

Shane, I consider the IImor package to be the best one out there right now, they have considerably more resources to invest in the tow boat sector than either Indmar or PCM.

That boat isnt actually an MC product, a dealer in Europe took an X-1 hull (which is no longer produced) and installed an electric powertrain. Bosch boats have been building an electric ski boat for a number of years that is actually a production design not a marketing exercise. The development costs for a boat like this are very minimal, the powertrain is something that is bought like any other and added into an existing hull design. This boat did not take the redesign that the Nautique did because of it's already a v-drive layout.

The new MC will reset the bar again for tournament boats. The idea isn't so much a stripped out boat, but modular options that are easily added by a promo member who doesn't need the bling or options that help with resale, but hurt the performance to increased weight and complexity.

To be fair skiing has its fair share of hotties...

I'll be at the Miami show in a month.

What Shane said is mostly correct....but the big deal is what is going on below the waterline. Development on it is pretty well along, but x-star, new deck for the x-2, and x-30 have all been deemed more important tasks to get accomplished for the '12 model year.

That is an X-25, the hauler that contract with MC has a setup like that and normally pulls a goose neck trailer with it.

Orlando is still a little too far to the north in Florida to guarantee good weather at that time of year. You're better off looking around the Palm Beach area.