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Engine Mods?


Willy

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I never see any engine mods here? You would think there would be some simple things available just like there is for cars, IE; air filters, chips, etc.

With gas getting as high as it is I would like to make sure I am getting the most performance out of my boat!!

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There's really not much you can do. There's hardly an aftermarket for marine engine performance upgrades for these engines. Heck, my boat doesn't even have an air filter, just a spark arrestor. So, I guess you could start by taking off your air filter, that would de-restrict it a little. Biggrin.gif

I see more guys on here from the U.K. talking about converting their Bu's to propane due to their cost of petrol over there. The only other mod. I could imagine someone doing is an engine rebuild with port and polished heads, and bore the motor out. Realistically, the only mod. people can do easily is re-prop their boat for their needs.

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Man,

I was at an autoparts store not too long ago and they had, on the counter, a little demonstration of an electronic "blower" that would mount inside the air intake tube just like the "tornado". The difference or "trick" thing was that it came with a switch that you would mount to the bottom side of your gas pedal and when you buried the pedal it would supply power to this fan. So, it was a pretty neat idea except for the day the fan grenades inside your intake tube and your pistons are trying to compress a bunch of plastic and metal.

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Willy,

Congrats on the new ride. Looking forward to seeing the pics of the new ride. Your '07 was an awesome color scheme!

Matt

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Willy,

Congrats on the new ride. Looking forward to seeing the pics of the new ride. Your '07 was an awesome color scheme!

Matt

Thanks Matt. I think that was the coolest looking boat I have ever had. However, I have never really had a boat with Yellow in it and the factory said they would not do the Classic / Progressive again. So I went in a little different direction and really ponied up on the trailer just for a change. I pick up the boat Friday so I will try to get some pics posted soon!

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There are many mods that can be done on a boat engine. Generally, the audience on this type of forum is not one geared to tinker with the basic engine package. My suggestion would be to go over to the performance boat type sites and see what is recommended.

I have done numerous mods to the engine of my Malibu, upped the upped the output around 400 hp via cylinder heads, intake and exhaust manifold changes, camshaft, timing and exhaust system changes. Along with a fine tuned prop, the boat picked up 100 hp which translated to 10 mph. For me, it was a success, for many probably too much for that type of gain on a high drag hull. The prop area, and there are a lot of threads on that, is a very significant area to make gains on these type of boats.

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If your going to pull your engine out or apart down to the short block like woodski did then of course there are all kinds off mods to make, just look at any performance parts house.

the small block Chevy has been around since the 50s so options are almost limitless. But thats if you have an old school carb model with no engine management to re program, unless you want to do that to. I think Galaxytoad swapped out an engine. If you got the cash do it.

Now if your just going to bolt something on, it's not worth it unless your looking at improving your 60ft times or ETs by 10ths or 100ths of a second, not really going to due much for a wake/ski boat. Maybe upping the rocker ratio to 1.6 on just the exhaust side would do a little with out other mods, but I seriously doubt you would notice in this type of boat, maybe Nitrous! you'd feel that until the stock crank or a rod left the engine or left holes in the pistons and or broke a tired ring.

Even though others and myself are" this type audience" I was able to put together 1 or 2 or... barley streetable little Chevy's. and I'm sure others have also, so don't stop asking for advice. :)

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A friend of ours took out the exhaust baffles and replaced with straight pipe. Should help it breath easier and add hp. Also sounds mean as heck when it's going down the lake away from you.

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Every one is right with the small list of mod options on a ski boat. Unless you are ready to spend BIG$ on a rebuild with some better parts, the only thing you can do with gas prices going up is really keep up with the little things. Clean Plugs, Clean cap and rotor, Good plug wires, clean spark arrestor, good fuel filter, keep oil changes on schedule and toped off. And it never hurts to run some Injector cleaner every once in a while to keep things clean in the fuel system.

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Agreed with what has been said. I think the general population that wants a "go fast" boat does so with a different hull as these are not conducive to speed. I personally just pulled the heads off my boat to replace a head gasket. I SERIOUSLY thought about a port and polish job but was mainly concerned with fuel mapping, and other computer controlled functions that I would not be able to adjust easily. At the end of the day I asked myself "what do I want out of my boat?"... the answer was reliability (I wanted to be sure that when I get my boat to the lake it will run good all day). When you start adding aftermarket parts and tweaking things the reliability generally diminishes. I have heard that there is a set of manifolds that will give you an extra 5-15hp over stock. I am not clear on the straight exhaust thing as you still need to have a crossover between the two banks of cylinders to create the scavaging effect of the pulsating exhaust. If your friend accomplished this, then great, otherwise I doubt it offered much performance and very well could be inhibiting performance.

Pete, thats funny you mention the "electric" blowers. I used to talk about that stuff all the time when I was modding my mustang and T/A. In the end they are all gimmicks. I did not realize this until I put my hand at the exit side of a centrifugal supercharger on day. When I realized how much air a 6psi supercharger pushes, and the force at which it pushes, I realized electric fans and the such are VERY VERY far off from achieving anything even close to power gains in this area.

In the end the most "bang for your buck" performance upgrade is a tuned prop to your specific application.

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Even if you were to mod them, how would you know how much hp you gain. You normally try and justify your expense versus the hp gained. Example: you spend $1000 and gain 20hp, it cost you $50 per every hp which is somewhat high. So where do you start and how do you find that out, a cam install would be a nice punch of extra hp and it's not all that expensive. I don't know of any dyno or tuners out there that would be able to be able to verify it. I have tuning friends with their own shops and they can tune them on the water and maybe get a few more miles an hour out of them (for the small sum of $450) but they even said, there is no way to know what the gains are. Too many variables out on the water :unsure:

I don't think it's worth the money, unless you have it to burn Thumbup.gif

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Maybe you need one of these Tornado things..

070521_Tornado_device.jpg

Whistling.gif

Hey, how much hp can you get with one of those :)

By the way, you know that guy got rich off of that stupid thing......they sold over 500,000 of them

Edited by 68Slalom
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Maybe you need one of these Tornado things..

070521_Tornado_device.jpg

Whistling.gif

Hey, how much hp can you get with one of those :)

By the way, you know that guy got rich off of that stupid thing......they sold over 500,000 of them

Probably 50hp.. Dontknow.gif .. but if you had an apple or something that you needed sliced, it sure would be a good multi-tasker! :lol:

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Maybe you need one of these Tornado things..

070521_Tornado_device.jpg

Whistling.gif

Hey, how much hp can you get with one of those :)

By the way, you know that guy got rich off of that stupid thing......they sold over 500,000 of them

Probably 50hp.. Dontknow.gif .. but if you had an apple or something that you needed sliced, it sure would be a good multi-tasker! :lol:

Probably where he got the idea (lol)

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I use to see a lot of guys add Whipple Superchargers on there performance boats.

http://www.whipplesuperchargers.com/produc...mp;DisplayCat=1

Not sure what kind of gain you would get, but it would look pretty sweet.

Yeah, but your talking about $8K for install and tuning and even if you got 120hp out of it what would you need it for, then again if you have the extra money Thumbup.gif I would do it :)

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I actually have one in my tool box that I'm going to install on my bike, I'm trying to reduce the power :unsure: seriously :) that thing scares the crap out of me at full throttle :blush:

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Maybe you need one of these Tornado things..

070521_Tornado_device.jpg

Whistling.gif

just thought someone might want to read this... http://autorepair.about.com/cs/productrevi...aafpr052002.htm

Thank god someone else knew to post a debunking link on that stupid Tornado. I found out about the falsities of it a couple years ago. That thing is freakin' expensive too. Highway robbery...

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I actually have one in my tool box that I'm going to install on my bike, I'm trying to reduce the power :unsure: seriously :) that thing scares the crap out of me at full throttle :blush:

I actually laughed out loud at that. Some of the newer bikes are nucking futs. Me, I like a good Monster. Biggrin.gif At some point I might buy myself one.

That blower thing....it reminds of Liquid Horsepower (I always wondered why they never made Liquid Torque :lol:). How much did they make off of that? Also, on the Audi forums one thing that I see a lot when making fun of wannabe tuners is the comment "yeah, add stickers to your ride & it will add something like 80HP". ROFL.gifROFL.gif

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I have done a great deal of research on upgrading the LS1 engine on the vette, I am not sure which block the monsoon uses but the diplacement is similar to the LS1, so possibly the same block. I have looked into cams, heads, exhaust, centrifugal superchargers etc. As far as exhaust, I would make sure I did my homework as the restrictions onthe exhaust can create back pressure which helps produce torque at low end. So, reducing restrictions to exhaust might be beneficial at higher RPM but hurting torque at low end. You could probably put on new cam and heads that you could either help low end torque or increase higher rpm HP but I have not seen a best of both worlds cam and heads that achieved both low end torque and higher hp. Most of the upgrades increase torque and HP at higher rpm's, mostly hitting the power curve at 3,000 plus rpm's. Without a forged bottom end there is increased risk of engine damage as well, especially in a supercharged application. I noticed I rarely go over 3,000 RPM unless I am just cruising accross the lake, but most of the time we are wakeboarding under the power curve.

My VLX has plenty of power for pulling a boarder, and I can already rip their arms off if I apply to much throttle. This boat will never be a race boat no matter how much HP and torque. There are faster boats with half the HP. Have to really determine what this boat is used for, if I really want the speed I would probably be better off investing in a different style boat. I would agree that a high performace prop might be a good option to achieve specific low end/top end goals.

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Oh yeah, if you really want speed, might consider a seadoo pwc, I think they go 70mph and get there in a hurry. Pretty cheap too when comparing to engine mods.

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