BraceMaker

Purple loctite works really well also. If you have insets and are sick of snugging screws every few sets back the screws out one at a time once your ski is set and put a drop under the head of the screw and then snug it up. Purple is low strength and will seal the threads from water intrusion.

My brother's did well, ecoboost is the only thing you sort of need to keep them on the turbo for efficiency. Pulled alot better than the Tacoma.

@VONMAN it persists. That and the "put the binding all the way forwards so your ski doesn't bounce off the wake"

It's usually called the steam pipe. With out it the heads can basically boil off some fluid and then that vapor expands and blows the antifreeze out

That said I know of a few people who swapped in 2 bolt engines and didn't do anything but flush the antifreeze and swap over the manifolds

@jpwhit if its poly rope it does float up a bit. you could try sneaking about a foot of lead free solder into the braid by pushing the rope together then slipping it in like using a Fid to splice.

Consider a winch? They all have remotes now, with a plain trailer mover in the tongue and a 2" receiver bolted to the back wall of your garage you can use the winch for all sorts of other tasks which you cannot say to a trailer mover. I would imagine you can back up to the trailer in the garage and pull it out but the backing it in is a problem?

Don't need help spending your money! I use a shell mounted on a MOB plate, but I spiral fractured a femur not coming out of a rubber boot so I really wanted something that wouldn't let that happen again. Once bit twice shy I think is the best way to put that. One in one out ski in the water body spinning. Also had a high ankle sprain using a dual hardshell system stuffed a ball and had to take the cuff off the shell. The cuff (and my ankle) got stuffed forwards hard enough that the cuff got jammed over the lower shell, and that was on a releasing system. So I went to the MOB and moved my shell over and that's been excellent. I also have a bum joint in my big toe from a hockey puck I have my wife on a Wiley rubber boot and I used those for a bit as well they just hurt the toe and cramp my foot too much.

You can use an Xmax or other rubber front it's about fit. The Xmax isn't a performance binding if you set the laces so you can get the boot on by wetting it and wetting your foot and push it on you'll come out but as you exceed that level of performance or if you just want a tighter fit then you need to move up to a different boot.

I wonder if it has a bit to do with a relative ratio of height to boot spread that being if you have a women's 7 shoe and are fairly short vs a men's 11 shoe and are pretty tall. her rear binding looks pretty tucked up to the front one but there on the ski in the gate glide makes it appear that her back foot is really far back. Lots of daylight between her knees. If you were left foot forwards twisting the hips outwards would be the opposite effect. Maybe advantage RFF?

@MISkier Carriage bolt washers, they're like prong nut washers with a square hole to secure the carriage bolt. Overdrill the through hole for the bolts and use something like a dremel or a flap disc in an angle grinder and carve a shallow channel from the through hole to the side of the bunk for drainage this helps water get out of there and prevents the wood soaking around the hardware so the wood won't rot. Also the wood swells around the hardware and makes it split. Skip nyloc nuts and just use plain nuts and washers with some locktite this seals the threads and will come off easier. You may occasionally lose a couple of nuts so just keep a few spares around but this is far better than trying to remove nylocs at some point in the future.

Adults - 3 sets / day Package $675 for the Spring Season (February thru 3rd week in May) $710 for the Summer Season (June, July, and first two weeks of August) Includes Room + Board. Cottage Rentals are available for an additional charge Contact for Availability in the Fall Season

What's a week at bennetts?

Significance is in the repeatability. It's like the joke where the museum guide is asked how old the skeleton is and he says 60,000,006 years. The guest says wow that's a really precise number how do you know, oh well it was 60,000,000 years old when I started working here. So if you can only measure repeatable +/- .004 well you're not chasing .001 If you have a machine square exactly .5" wide hook that over the tail down the fin then extend the caliper square to that and remove the .5" and you'll get extremely accurate measurements there.

@mlange I wouldn't do that. Those surfaces need to be flat and a palm sander is going to round off the edges no matter how hard you try. I don't even like the idea of the steel wool. For small overspray I usually use a flat razor blade. If there is rust or I need to check for high spots I use a sheet of plate glass with pressure sensitive abrasive film from 3M stuck to the sheet its essentially dead flat and then you try to work the whole area evenly while rotating the glass and sliding so that you can lap the surface dead nuts flat. But then again the local NAPA by me has a machinist and small projects like that are affordable vs. the effort. If you have a glass shop locally I was able to buy quite a few different sized bits of fairly thick glass and have it tempered. When they make custom glass they cut sheets to size and then temper it. So if you call them up and see if they have any drops that you can buy they're usually happy to sell it to you for not too much money.

That would suck if they're actually powdercoated I'd be bringing that to the machinist and having them cleaned up if that's the case.

Do you have a ski stand of any description? If not it's far harder you need 2 hands free and the ski needs to sit still. The tip on your sandal works great for measuring dft but setting it that way doesn't work. Also you need a fin knocker snug your screws a bit and tap then remeasure, move set screws tap and remeasure. If the fin moves with out a tap the measurement will move when you snug the box.

That style of binding I would give a hard pass. It's really what I would consider a boot for combo skis the adjustment is one size fits no one and the risk is you want more support so you tighten it down and then you get hurt. They also arent that much easier to get into. Fiddling with lace locks and such sucks. Nothing faster than a wileys bit of lube and squish you're in. That's faster than most hardshells and in practice hardshells you have the double and triple checking for safety and your liner rituals.

Put the fin box in a bench vice tap a torqs bit into the Allen then wiggle it back and forth the tapping in usually breaks the threads free

I agree. But with a few hundred kids skiing each of those kids having a couple of relatives who might watch and the running order taking some time I think you do get a group of people who would tune in. I don't think I'm saying its worth TWBC but I do think those relatives like it. Of course there is always that professional photographer putting up shots from the event with their watermark so you can buy pictures from your kids set and how many shots do they sell over the course of 4 days. Probably not that many.

@skierjp that's not entirely fair I know quite a few people particularly aunts and uncles and grand parents who got a real kick being able to watch their family ski. If the juice is worth the squeeze... well that's hard to tell. Of course 4 lakes adds cost and complexity but it does fix the issue you mentioned there isn't enough content on one lake at one time to really have thrilling events. The content that was on TWBC around Kaifas and San Gervasio pro-am was excellent but that just goes to the power of the commentary that was being provided by Freddie and Matteo and Robert etc. But if you have 4 lakes running you have enough skiers in motion to really keep action going on film. Of course a lot of that action isn't necessarily that thrilling but if you could just have essentially plain live feed running on 4 youtube channels and then a single channel running commentary pulling action as needed from the lakes. I think you'd have fairly compelling watching. Enough to get the viewership high enough for people to watch it? Maybe.

I mean yes but this is 2023 - failing any other source.... find a source. SBC have two different sizes of hardware and a torque sequence that is a torque amount and then a torque angle, you bring them to torque with a torque wrench and then switch to a torque angle gauge and then you go around twice with that torque angle gauge to the correct setting IF you are using the torque to yield hardware. Its 22ft lbs and then a 90 degree torque and then another torque to 50 or 90 degrees depending on the hardware and then a final pass to torque the small bolts around the outside. This is not a go inside out semi-circular motion type of guess work. My suggestion about studs is based on if you're going to take them off the studs are re-usable and stronger.

Personally I'd be calling up ARP and getting a set of head studs shipped out. They should know what the proper product would be or the questions about it and on a boat even more reason to skip torque to yield hardware buy once cry once.

@aupatking Yes I am saying Malibu was at fault. I think a manufacturer who makes a product doesn't get a free pass based on what the end user's skill or knowledge or abilities are. I would go so far as to say the contributory negligence finding was a poor judgement and let Malibu off the hook for what could have been a much harsher judgement. I'll lay it out. Malibu was on record in the lawsuit that they took a boat that didn't have an open bow and they put one in it, cut a hole in the bow dropped in seats, sold it. They didn't do anything to evaluate their design. They are on record in the lawsuit saying they didn't even toss a few 100lb sand bags up there and drive the thing around they just started making boats with a hole in the bow and tossing seats in there. Which brings up the motive, why would you make the product? Well simply market share. You want that person who is comparison shopping to go Four Winns horizon 19, seats 8, open bow, V8 engine, 19 feet long. Malibu Response, 19 feet, V8 engine open bow seats 8. But this one's a ski boat. So I can have all the things I want, I can put my kids in the front and tool around the lake in a product that is exactly the same as this 4 winns. And that buyer has made an assumption about the design the company has undergone. He reasonably assumes that both of these brands in the design and testing phases of those boats have done the same work so that their products have similar safety margins because that's how product design works. And you can be certain the sales guy at the dealership that had the open bow Malibu on offer wasn't going out of their way to dissuade the potential buyers of the boats from their decision to buy the Malibu vs. going across the street and buying the 4 winns. You are making the assumption that all the buyers are people who have been around ski boats, I am making the assumption that Malibu made their business decisions to sell their product to people who would have otherwise bought a different product. My comments about the difference in handling between these boats is based on personal experience. That's not something a manufacturer of a product can rely on. And yes I would go so far as to say that I personally believe that if you are mastercraft or nautique you at least bothered to test your product out on the water during the design phase. Having driven the response and driven the mastercraft 205s in question the 205 is a far more seaworthy boat. I don't think that was accidental.

Ouch. Thought so the moment the ski came out looked like that heel popped