Must Ski, looks like we just posted at the same time... Did you pull more than one footer at a time with the cyclone? How many?
I pulled two so far. The 85 I was referring to is our team's 85 20 ft Hydrodyne closed bow. That boat has a front 39 gal fuel tank, standard 225. My 20 ft Open Bow has a 225 HO on it. So far for my personal boat i like the Cyclone better than the Rebel.
Took the boat out for its maiden run tonight. Only had 1/2 hour before dark but was very happy. I stuck on a 21" Trophy Plus I had as I've not yet received my cyclone. The motor sounds like it is electric at idle and up to at least 1000rpm. Maybe this is unique to the 08 models with the new injectors but it does sound different. Very happy so far, will provide more feedback when I've finished the boat and tested it properly.
Hi All Update as promised We pulled five slaloms from the deep (average weight about 170 pounds) with the 21. With perfect pass, speed holding is spot on, hand throttle isn't set up properly yet. Boat will do exactly 100kph on the GPS at a bit over 6000rpm (right on the soft limiter). Would do more with a taller prop. The engine needs to be lifted about another two inches, the cav plate is already 2.5 inches above the bottom of the boat. I'll install a jacking plate in the next couple of weeks. I am amazed by this engine. Quiet, economical and more powerful than I could have hoped. I don't know why I have to lift the engine so far to get rid of the spray off the cav plate. I wonder if it is something to do with the lightening gear case? Anyway, perfect pass works perfectly with this motor. The motor is everything i'd hoped it would be. I'm at the lake right now, so back to it!
It sounds like you got every thing you wanted. I ran the numbers and the slip comes up at slightly under 5% which is unheard of. How is it at low speed? jim
Hi Jim At 98.8 kph GPS I was pulling 6060rpm (as indicated by perfect pass). Icommand only reads to within 50rpm but it lines up with PP. Eg at 530rpm PP, Icommand will flick between 500rpm and 550rpm. I didn't check RPM at 100kph as I was busy watching the guy I was racing. He has only ever lost to me. 4 boat lengths out of the hole then just a bit more up top. I guess the prop casting/quoted pitch is slight off if your calculator doesn't line up? As far as low speed, at precisely 2100rpm, perfect pass has a bit of trouble holding. You can hear the motor changing RPM and you can see it fluctuate by up to +30rpm - 10rpm. I can only assume that 2100rpm is a cutover point for stratified to homogonous combustion. It doesn't happen at 2125rpm setting where it will hold to within 10rpm. I used morse 33c cables so that I could get perfect pass to work easily but had to bodge the hand throttle end to make it work in the omc control. The proper adator kit has just arrived for that end so I'll fix that up. At the moment, the hand throttle is a bit firm and just a bit sloppy but I will sort that out. By hand, speeds under 30kph are easy to hold. Between 30-36kph it is a bit of a challenge. PP does it without any problems though, so we just let it. Wakeboarding, three men on planks or whatever are no problem. So, speed holding is great and it will get better when I tidy up the throttle. I'm pretty sure you can also change the cutover points if you don't like when it does it, but in my case going 25rpm faster is no burden. Without PP you couldn't tell a lot of these things anway. It is an excellent tach even without its speed control features.
I suspect that the effective pitch might be a little higher than 21 and the slip a little less than 10%. It must be difficult to measure the pitch of a double cupped prop. My experience is that cup makes more difference than popular belief. I applaud you for making the perfect pass work on a pull for power motor. I know you did that once before. I know you are familiar with how to rig springs to eliminate the hand throttle play. You came to the same conclusions that I did in that regard. The e-tec throttle system looks like an improvement over my carb motor. It is expecting a lot from a two stroke motor to have linear throttle response in the 2000 rpm range specially when pulling a load although I have no experience with the e-tec. In my case although I don't pull big loads, I have found that it takes a given prop shaft rpm to produce the wake I am looking for at low speed on my 18 dyne. My daughter is a very experienced skier. I spent some time laying over the aft deck watching the wake to see exactly what is going on back there. It is strange that her boat (Dyne 17.6) when it had the same motor as mine required 1 inch more pitch to achieve the same rpm. The two props came from different shops and that might explain it. It is cool that you beat your friend with the inboard. jim edit: I meant to say push for power motor.
Hi Jim I'll take some pictures of the perfect pass setup and post them here. I think you guys would like to have it on your boats. It is really, really good at holding speed. I agree 10% is a more realistic prop slip, especially as the motor isn't mounted high enough yet. My prop guy told me no two factory props are ever alike and rarely are all three blades the same pitch let alone all three the same, correct pitch. I haven't raced the inboard yet and I doubt I will now that he has seen what my boat does. The boat I raced was a Flightcraft 20XLT (similar to the 18xlt but moulded in platform) with 200 merc. He has only ever lost holeshot runs to me. It is a light boat that gets going quickly I would be really happy if I could give the hand throttle 50% more range of movement for the same speeds. For precision work, with that much excess power most of the time, it would be nice to have a bigger throttle lever range. That reason alone is enough to make most skiers better off with a 150. I will get my controls sorted out but few dealers would. The funny thing about perfect pass, I sat up on Christmas eve and decided to just make it work. I picked up a hacksaw and resolved not to put it down until it was sorted. All I had to do was hack a bit off the adaptors that I had made for Yamaha and get my head around it again. It is all backwards and that took me some thought. But it did work first go and I was very happy as I hadn't water tested it until my holiday week. Jim, the E-TEC is a very nice motor. I know you are captain carb, but an E-TEC 150 would work great for you...
Do you think it would be possible to modify the point where the throttle cable attaches to the hand throttle to move it closer to the pivot to gain more throw on the handle with the same cable movement? You would also have to modify the handle to have more throw to still get full throttle. If any one can do that, you can. It might be possible to modify the shift linkage lever to go in gear sooner by increasing the shift cable attach point distance from the pivot and have the throttle to pick up sooner to gain the throw you would need. Ab Crosby saw this problem 35 years ago and actually modified the cams in the inboard style Morse hand throttle and shift to accomplish essentially what I said. I would not recommend one of those with a modern non-ratcheting gear case like yours and mine. I'm pretty sure it would tear up the clutch. If you know me as captcarb, then you know that I had a Mirage Ski Racer with a modified Merc 260 that would turn a 28 pitch chopper prop 9000 rpm. That is a fuel injected motor and I loved it. The Dyne is just more fun. There are some things about my carb motor that I really don't care for. The mickey mouse spark advance linkage is one of them. I don't like push for power and I know you understand that. I did major surgery on my engine throttle linkage to get the response I was looking for including re-contouring the throttle cam. They cured most of the problems with the e-tec, but in the process it gained almost 50 pounds. A lot of that is in the cowling and that is inexcusable. My cowl is very light and the motor is whisper quiet. A new 115 e-tec weighs the same as my 150 faststrike. The 115 is plenty for swivel skiing, but I like to have fun too. When we are not skiing, I run a torque shift prop which starts out at 11 inch pitch and adds pitch to keep the motor at it's max horsepower rpm. It can go as high as 26. I have posted this before. A friend of mine has a lot of Merc V-6 parts. Some years are lighter than others. He knows which parts are the lightest and how to further lighten them. We weighed a bunch of his stuff one day and concluded that we could build a 2.5 liter 150 or 200 that would weigh 350 or less. It could even be laser fuel injected. It would not be emission compliant or "new". Those Mercs also have a sort of hideous intake noise that probably could be quieted down with an OMC style intake silencer. Some time I think about that, but if I ever do get another 18, it will be a new one. It will probably have a new 175 e-tec on it. I would consider that (or the 150) to be the best combination now available for family use. The thing is, my boat and motor will probably last the rest of my life at it's current usage. jim
You'll like that E-Tec more and more as you get some hours on her and she loosens up a bit. We'll have 5 new small block E-Tecs this year on two boats so I guess I'll have an opinion then, but so far I have not had enough time with them to say whether they would hold speed well in a single application or not. Depends on that transition range. Any of the 3.3's are excellent for waterskiing. I assume the 3.4 250HO should be decent as well. Getting closer to the most wonderful time of the year again when 7 new Evinrudes are in the shop.
