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Power Wedge Question


db252

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I have noticed that while moving at wake or surf speeds you can only move it to about half way up according to the gage. Haven't ever tried to deploy it when moving and to rasie completely up you have to be moving, but slowly.

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I just had my new vRide with power wedge out on the water for the first time yesterday. Here are some observations. I had to be in gear to lower or raise it from the up position. Once it was deployed, I could move it from any position between half-down to full-down while at wakeboard speeds. However, it will not retract more than half-down until you slow down to idle speed.

Most of the time, when you momentarily tap the switch, the guage moves to the next of the five positions. But sometimes, it would stop in between "tick marks" on the guage. If you then moved it up or down, you could get it to stop at one of the tick marks.

I noticed that when you are bringing it up, you can stop between half-down and up. You could then accelerate the boat with the wedge in an "illegal" position. Probably not a good idea. In fact, one time I thought I had it all the way up, but it was just a tad short of the full up positon. When I hit the throttle, the wedge threw up a huge rooster tail. Cool, but again, probably not a good idea.

I though I heard somewhere that the computer wasn't supposed to let the wedge ever stop anywhere in the up to half-down range, so I'm having my dealer check on this with Malibu. Maybe I've got a faulty comptuer.

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I just had my new vRide with power wedge out on the water for the first time yesterday. Here are some observations. I had to be in gear to lower or raise it from the up position. Once it was deployed, I could move it from any position between half-down to full-down while at wakeboard speeds. However, it will not retract more than half-down until you slow down to idle speed.

I'm going to assume that this is a saftey issue. It would probably be bad to have someone swimming behind your boat, you flip the switch to start lifting it, they get something caught and hurt themselves. We got the power wedge on our new Bu which hasn't been delivered. Just curious, how long does it take to drop from all the way up to all the way down? I just mean like, if you have a boarder back there, and you need to drop the wedge before getting him up, are you going to have to drag him halfway across the lake to get the wedge down?

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Those of you that have it, what minimum and maximum speeds will it operate at that you have experienced?

Dave,

I think the minimum is 1000 RPM's, before it will work according to the manual.

I cannot tell you how fast that is until I get her wet, which hopefully is in a couple of days! Biggrin.gif

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Just curious, how long does it take to drop from all the way up to all the way down? I just mean like, if you have a boarder back there, and you need to drop the wedge before getting him up, are you going to have to drag him halfway across the lake to get the wedge down?

I didn't time it, but I'd say about 10 seconds or a bit less.

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My experience this last weekend was:

Above ??? rpm you can not completely raise or lower the wedge. You can only adjust from full down to half down according to the gauge. I did adjust the wedge while my son was boarding. From full down to half, the bow kicked up and the wake became more inverted ( I guess that is the correct term). My son said it kicked him up more.

Below ??? rpm but moving you can completely raise or lower the wedge. I still have to play a little more this weekend... But, I think even though I was sitting still and raising the wedge, I thought the display still alerted me the wedge was moving even thought it wasn't. I will know for sure this weekend.

I did play with it in the driveway and you can raise and lower if someone gets under the boat and moves the paddle wheel!

It didn't take long to move either.

Man was it nice not having to stick my hands in the cold water to move the wedge. In the past, my kids couldn't get enough leverage with their shorter arms. So, I was stuck always doing it.

Edited by larrys
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larrys,

While retracting your wedge from half down to fully up, if you let go of the switch when it's about 1/4 down, does it continue to fully retract, or does it stay in that 1/4 down position?

Mine will stop at 1/4 down, and I'm concerned that if I accidentally drive like that, I might rip the transom off the boat. I'm wondering if I have a computer problem.

Also, does yours always stop at the five little tick marks on the guage between fully down and 1/2 down? Mine does most of the time, but sometimes stops between tick marks.

Thanks,

Ricko

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larrys,

While retracting your wedge from half down to fully up, if you let go of the switch when it's about 1/4 down, does it continue to fully retract, or does it stay in that 1/4 down position?

Mine will stop at 1/4 down, and I'm concerned that if I accidentally drive like that, I might rip the transom off the boat. I'm wondering if I have a computer problem.

Also, does yours always stop at the five little tick marks on the guage between fully down and 1/2 down? Mine does most of the time, but sometimes stops between tick marks.

Thanks,

Ricko

I haven't tried what you are saying.

My gauge seemed a little flacky... It would sometimes move even if I wasn't hitting the switch. My dealer just returned from Malibu/Indmar school and he said the talked about the dealer adjustments/calibrations that might be needed. We are going to take a look at my first maintenance.

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larrys,

While retracting your wedge from half down to fully up, if you let go of the switch when it's about 1/4 down, does it continue to fully retract, or does it stay in that 1/4 down position?

Mine will stop at 1/4 down, and I'm concerned that if I accidentally drive like that, I might rip the transom off the boat. I'm wondering if I have a computer problem.

Also, does yours always stop at the five little tick marks on the guage between fully down and 1/2 down? Mine does most of the time, but sometimes stops between tick marks.

Thanks,

Ricko

I haven't tried what you are saying.

My gauge seemed a little flacky... It would sometimes move even if I wasn't hitting the switch. My dealer just returned from Malibu/Indmar school and he said the talked about the dealer adjustments/calibrations that might be needed. We are going to take a look at my first maintenance.

Thanks. Please let us know on this thread what you find out.

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Okay, it seems like most, if not all of you that have tried to mess with your power wedge experienced the same thing. The "book" is a little unclear other than saying "Wedge will not activate unless RPM's are above 1000." What it doesn't say is the cut of speed or rpm for the higher range that will not allow the power wedge to operate.

I did a limited test on this like try to lower the wedge from a fully up position to a downward position at 22 mph which nothing happened. Slowed to 15 mph and nothing happened. This was the very first test I did with the wedge so I was a little worried. Then I went to an idle speed and it went down with no problems. The gauge moved slow at first and then went real fast which I've heard this gauge is pretty much in par with our fuel gauge as far as accuracy. At same idle speed, I tried to raise it and it came up no problem. Wedge speed up or down is about 5-6 seconds.

I did not know that if the wedge is half way down already that it may work to the full down position or back up to the half way spot at higher speeds so I can't comment on that. I will try that the next time I go out. I wish I new that already cause once I had the wedge back all the way up, I brought my speed up to 10 mph this time (wakesurf speed) and tried to lower it with no result. Maybe if it was half way down already it would have worked.

Next time out I will definitely do specific tests with the wedge and recomment later. Thought I might go out today but the weather has denied me.

Please continue to let me and the others know of your experiences.

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Those of you that have it, what minimum and maximum speeds will it operate at that you have experienced?

Dave,

I think the minimum is 1000 RPM's, before it will work according to the manual.

I cannot tell you how fast that is until I get her wet, which hopefully is in a couple of days! Biggrin.gif

PW can be operated deployed between 1 and 10 mph. It cannot be deployed while the boat is at a standstill, for safety reasons.

Edited by Madmanacrossthewater
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As we found out yesterday, the wedge will move in a full up and down position between the speeds of 1 and 10 mph as stated above. As long as the wedge is in the half way or full down position it will lower or re-raise to the half way position at higher speeds. We could not get the gauge to stop anywhere between the half way up and down position......it seemed to want to be in one or the other. What we couldn't tell, was if the wedge was in a position physically between those marks or somewhere in between due to no visual confirmation.

Now when we were moving at the slower speed (below 10 mph), we could get the wedge to register at the different marks on the gauge between the half way up and full up position. To me, this seems a little backwards. I would prefer the wedge to go to the full up position once it passes the half way spot since there doesn't seem to be a benefit of having the wedge between the half and full up position.

I'm going to try and do a controlled test with an air gun on the paddle wheel while on the trailer to see the exact locations of the wedge in reference to the gauge. I am also aware that everyone's gauge may register results differently but we (or maybe just I) need some kind of base line.

More to come when I get to it. Please continue to post your personal experiences.

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I was just playing with the boat in the driveway on the trailer. With the ignition on, I hit down on the PW switch, and down it went. It will not come back up. I guess I'll have to do the air blower thing.

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I was just playing with the boat in the driveway on the trailer. With the ignition on, I hit down on the PW switch, and down it went. It will not come back up. I guess I'll have to do the air blower thing.

Yes, Malibu said that you can power your wedge down on the trailer but it won't go back up unless the paddle wheel is spinning so what you experienced is normal.

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I set up a blower on the paddle wheel so I could run it in the driveway. Now I see why the gauge goes so fast from 1/2 to full down. It's because that part of the guage only represents about 10 to 15 degress (out of 90) of the travel. I took some pictures at up, 1/4 down, 1/2 down and full down. I'll post them as soon as I'm able.

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I set up a blower on the paddle wheel so I could run it in the driveway. Now I see why the gauge goes so fast from 1/2 to full down. It's because that part of the guage only represents about 10 to 15 degress (out of 90) of the travel. I took some pictures at up, 1/4 down, 1/2 down and full down. I'll post them as soon as I'm able.

Very Cool. You beat me to it since I was going to do that on Tuesday. I am looking forward to your pictures to see what you got and compare.

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can yall describe to me where this paddle wheel is??

I have experienced much of the same of what yall have been posting, but i havent noticed it stopping at tick marks on the gauge. Do yall hold down the button or just tap it for each position? :unsure:

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The paddle wheel is a little aft of halfway back on the starboard side underneath, at least on a vRide.

It seems to (most of the time) stop at the tick marks if you just tap the gauge. The last half of the gauge represents only a few inches of wedge travel, so that's why it moves so fast.

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Okay, I just did my Crew Supporter (hmmm, sounds like a male athletic garment) payment, so now I can post the pics.

I'll put each picture in a separate post.

The first one is with the wedge full up, with the needle on the gauge at the far right, 4 o'clock position.

post-1614-1145369944.jpg

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Here is the second pic at 1/4 down, with the needle at the 5 o'clock postion. Note that this is not a valid position for operation (you might pull the transom off the boat!)

post-1614-1145370098.jpg

Edited by ricko
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Here is the third pic at 1/2 down, with the needle straight down at the 6 o'clock position. This is the first postion that is valid for operation (towing a rider).

post-1614-1145370246.jpg

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Here is the fourth pic at full down, with the needle to the far left, 8 o'clock position.

You can see that there is very little actual wedge travel between 1/2 down and full down (the normal operating range) and that would explain why the needle moves so fast between these positions.

As I've mentioned before, when in the normal operating range, a quick tap on the switch will *usually* move the needle one tick mark. If it stops between tick marks, I've found that tapping the switch down or up a couple times usually gets it to stop at the tick mark.

post-1614-1145370377.jpg

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And finally.... here's a picture of how I got the speedometer to register about 5 mph so I could operate the PW on the trailer. (Click on the pic to enlarge.)

post-1614-1145371581.jpg

Edited by ricko
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