2018 21 VLX purchase - wake or diamond hull?

[85 Barefoot]

1 hour ago, thebill said:

cant remember but it was on older models around 2000-2001 where we rode both sunsetter and wakesetters with different hulls on daily basis and could tell the slight difference..maybe that has changed a lot since they upgrade hulls every 4-6 years..  

you're talking about direct drive sunsetter and wakesetters, correct?  if so, yes, those differences were more pronounced, but much less so in Vdrive configs for wakeboarding and surfing.  If you could honestly tell a difference between say an 04 VLX and an 04 sunscape, props to you.  BAck when I was riding at my best in comps and such I couldn't tell the difference.  But, could at ski speeds.

[BLSousa]

We have a 22VLX with the Diamond and my cousin has the 22VLX with the Wake hull.  We have run them side by side.  Here is what we have noticed:

For surfing:  the quality of the wave overall is the same with one very important caveat: On the Wake hull, the goofy wave is superior to the regular wave; on the Diamond, it is the opposite, the regular wave is superior to the goofy wave.  

Wakeboard wake:  If this is important to you, it has been debated at length and the best recommendation seems to be to do a DEMO and decide for yourself.

For Skiing:  There is a difference; the Diamond is noticeably smaller, rounder and softer.  That being said, even with the Diamond, with the boat in our typical configuration, it is so rear heavy that it is not enjoyable to recreationally ski behind.  With the bimini deployed, anything more than 13' off (yes that is 13, not 15) you are on the rooster tail.  I created a rope length of 13' off to hit that spot as it is the best that we have found so far.  I ski at 32-34, it does clean up better at 34-36 but that is a little to fast for me.  The bimini has an effect on the wake (lifts the front and places more weight on the back), having all the pumps and empty PNP bags in the back has a big effect on the wake.  To get a really enjoyable wake you have to remove the bimini, strip all the bags out, remove the 10 plus life jackets, ropes, and boards, etc.  All that said, I ski behind my sister's boat.

 

Driving in all configurations:  the Diamond performs better at cruise speeds and is more resistant to porpoising.  Having that extra lift really seems to help resist the porpoising that any boat will get if it is loaded too heavy in the back by either people or ballast.  Both of the 22VLX's cruise well, it is just the Diamond is a little better.

Conclusion:  Personally, it would come down to a regular vs. goofy issue.  If you surf goofy, get the wake hull.  If you surf regular, get the Diamond.  If you surf both equally, the Diamond would be my choice.  If you like to ski too, make sure that one of your buddies has a ski boat

[NWBU]

21 minutes ago, BLSousa said:

For surfing:  the quality of the wave overall is the same with one very important caveat: On the Wake hull, the goofy wave is superior to the regular wave; on the Diamond, it is the opposite, the regular wave is superior to the goofy wave.  

Has anyone else seen this in their experience? A regular wave that's better than the goofy side would be interesting to a lot of people.

[minnmarker]

17 minutes ago, NWBU said:

Has anyone else seen this in their experience? A regular wave that's better than the goofy side would be interesting to a lot of people.

No.  It had to be weighting in the boats or something else.  Hulls are symmetrical and props rotate the same direction.

[IXFE]

This^^^

I loved everything about that review until the regular > goofy claim. 

Having owned a 21 VLX diamond I can positively state that was NOT our experience. 

[BLSousa]

I will tell you that I own the Diamond, have 60 hours of surfing on it and our regular wave is superior to our goofy.  We have tried dozens of weighting combinations and the regular is substantially cleaner and all around better than the goofy.   @JeffC has our same boat with the same Diamond hull and has stated on this forum that he was having difficulty cleaning up his goofy wave.  Anybody that wants to see it first hand is more than welcome to join us for a session

We run the same weighting, speed, and wedge settings on both my cousin's wake hull and my diamond.  I was surprised to see that the settings for both would be the same.  

Edited February 8, 2018 by BLSousa
edit

[tgmind]

BLSousa, Thanks for the info. Great to know.

[isellacuras]

3 hours ago, BLSousa said:

I will tell you that I own the Diamond, have 60 hours of surfing on it and our regular wave is superior to our goofy.  We have tried dozens of weighting combinations and the regular is substantially cleaner and all around better than the goofy.   @JeffC has our same boat with the same Diamond hull and has stated on this forum that he was having difficulty cleaning up his goofy wave.  Anybody that wants to see it first hand is more than welcome to join us for a session

We run the same weighting, speed, and wedge settings on both my cousin's wake hull and my diamond.  I was surprised to see that the settings for both would be the same.  

I'd like to come join you for a set. I just don't see how that's possible with prop rotation being the big factor in the difference in sides.  This is the first i have heard of a boat with left hand rotating prop having a superior regular wave. I'm in sac, not far away. 

Edit: it's not that i need to see for myself to believe you, it's just that I'd like to join you for a set. 

Edited February 8, 2018 by isellacuras

[KeepingupwiththeJones]

My 22’s a diamond hull and the goofy wave is definitely better.  @Stevo has spent plenty of time on the regular side and I’m sure he would agree.

[Stevo]

1 hour ago, KeepingupwiththeJones said:

My 22’s a diamond hull and the goofy wave is definitely better.  @Stevo has spent plenty of time on the regular side and I’m sure he would agree.

I’ve never seen a Malibu SG wave that favored the Regular over the goofy wave.

agree with comments above, if that is even possible it had be be weight placement

[wheelman]

It must be that magical unicorn Malibu that all us regular guys have been searching for for years!

[BLSousa]

1 hour ago, KeepingupwiththeJones said:

My 22’s a diamond hull and the goofy wave is definitely better.  @Stevo has spent plenty of time on the regular side and I’m sure he would agree.

Well, this is great news!  Based on all the comments, it sounds like my Goofy wave can get a whole lot better. (big thumbs up!)  My son will be stoked!  I would really love it if you guys with a Diamond would come out with us and dial in that Goofy wave.  Right now, we have to pull out so much of the wedge to get the whitewash to go away that we sacrifice a significant amount of size.

[KeepingupwiththeJones]

7 minutes ago, BLSousa said:

Well, this is great news!  Based on all the comments, it sounds like my Goofy wave can get a whole lot better. (big thumbs up!)  My son will be stoked!  I would really love it if you guys with a Diamond would come out with us and dial in that Goofy wave.  Right now, we have to pull out so much of the wedge to get the whitewash to go away that we sacrifice a significant amount of size.

What’s your current setup? I am running wakemakers customs in the lockers with 400lbs of led in the bow. Wedge two clicks up from ramp for goofy and three clicks from ramp for regular side. Speed 11.0 - 11.2

[isellacuras]

2 hours ago, KeepingupwiththeJones said:

What’s your current setup? I am running wakemakers customs in the lockers with 400lbs of led in the bow. Wedge two clicks up from ramp for goofy and three clicks from ramp for regular side. Speed 11.0 - 11.2

Did you stash your lead around your bow tank?  I pulled my cover the other day and i was only able to get 100# next to the tank.  And both 50# bags were on the back side of the tank. I was trying to get 200 under there and wanted them as far forward as i could. 

[Stevo]

45 minutes ago, isellacuras said:

Did you stash your lead around your bow tank?  I pulled my cover the other day and i was only able to get 100# next to the tank.  And both 50# bags were on the back side of the tank. I was trying to get 200 under there and wanted them as far forward as i could. 

This was Sunday. Not sure he has pulled the cover to check.

but IIRC he didn’t want the extra tongue weight for towing. 

[Nitrousbird]

19 hours ago, thebill said:

cant remember but it was on older models around 2000-2001 where we rode both sunsetter and wakesetters with different hulls on daily basis and could tell the slight difference..maybe that has changed a lot since they upgrade hulls every 4-6 years..  

Only the 2001 has a different hull.  The rest are the same hull, for the V drive at least.  I still contend that heavily weighted you won't see a difference.

[ahopkins22LSV]

10 hours ago, BLSousa said:

Well, this is great news!  Based on all the comments, it sounds like my Goofy wave can get a whole lot better. (big thumbs up!)  My son will be stoked!  I would really love it if you guys with a Diamond would come out with us and dial in that Goofy wave.  Right now, we have to pull out so much of the wedge to get the whitewash to go away that we sacrifice a significant amount of size.

It sounds like you are either going too slow, using too much wedge, or have way too much weight in the rear/not evened out enough. Maybe start a new thread with the specifics of how you setup for regular and goofy so we don't clutter this one up too much?

[Sailvi767]

Don’t disregard the one post about porpoising. My 2016 22 VLX with the wake hull porpoised badly with any rear weight bias. 2017 23LSV with the diamond hull is night and day better. Not a apples to apples comparison but a huge difference.

[JeffC]

Somewhere I have some mid season video of my son in law surfing and switching from regular to goofy sides.  Ill see if I can find it.   Im not sure where in the process we were when I took that video, but I will say that as the season wore on we got better and better at tuning/cleaning up the wave.   I REALLY should have documented the settings... more than just the profile, but from memory, unless I had a large crew, the recipe was along the lines of:

• All hard tanks full
• Rear bags (550s) slightly less than full.   I fiddled around with favoring the surf side slightly heavier, but honestly cant remember if that helped or not.
• Always try to get at least on of the crew in the bow, rest in the cabin.   My VLX likes bow weight.
• 10.7- 10.8 mph, wedge 1-2 tabs down from lift.   

As my crew got larger, I could fill the rears completely, but then I had to get as much weight in the bow as possible (3 people if I could).  My biggest issue then was getting it to plane out enough that I wasnt running the engine > 4K rpm and incinerating dinosaurs at historic rates. 

This was a 2017 22VLX 410 diamond hull at at 5K feet elevation, turning the 2249 torque prop.  Crew has runs from 5-13.   Get my best wave with a crew of 8-9.   Above 9, it takes a little more shuffling of crew to get things trimmed out the way we want.    We put 89 hours on the meter last year, a very good chunk of that was surfing.

Someone mentioned above that maybe we should take this into it's own thread, that probably is a good idea... 

EDIT>>> BTW, I should have said... I surf goofy side.   At end of season,  the goofy wave was larger than regular, and fairly clean, although I guess I would say it was not as pretty as the regular side wave.   Lots of push, and I could drift pretty far back on the wave without losing it.   For context, Im no expert surfer yet --- can ride as long as I want, but have not been able to get around on a 360 yet.

 

Edited February 9, 2018 by JeffC

[isellacuras]

I have come to the realization that a pretty wave doesn't make it a good wave. On the contrary a little white wash doesn't make it bad. I judge a wave by the way it feels. My boat is sensitive to weight shifts and my guess is both the 21 and 22 VLX's are similar (moreso the 21). Although i have my boat dialed in pretty well, i still make micro adjustments each time out. 

[IXFE]

2 hours ago, Sailvi767 said:

Don’t disregard the one post about porpoising. My 2016 22 VLX with the wake hull porpoised badly with any rear weight bias. 2017 23LSV with the diamond hull is night and day better. Not a apples to apples comparison but a huge difference.

I owned a 14, 15, and 16 LSV all of them with the wake hull and none of them porpoised.  I think what you witnessed has more to do with 21'10 vs. 23'