Rik, skaterdave is a lost cause, i don't think he knows the difference between a true marine engine and the lumps he has in his boat. Just like the motors in the 43' DW, the powerband was absolute garbage until a true marine engine builder (Chief Engines) reworked them.

Every Doug Wright, save for the outboards, has been a "custom" boat. Drives, engines, and structure just to name a few, have all changed. As such, there becomes no definitive method to rig a DW, especially not for a specific setup. It takes someone who has the experience, ability and willingness to adapt to the changes. Guys like Grant and JT have been successful with this. Who else besides these two and Gary has rigged a DW? And I mean from the beginning, not simply a re-rig. There is a reason these guys are always involved. They have to be listened to and trusted.

Motor placement is not set; they do not come mounted from Skater. Drive spacing and height is not determined like the transoms cut at MTI. You get lucky if the windshield is in.

No very noticeable changes have been made to the bottom, however the area of the hull past the aftmost step has been raised 1/8." Doug has spent some time straightening and faring the bottom of the 32 mold, however, the results are not visible when checked with a straightedge or string line, even when compared to the others. It's nowhere near the 3/4" you must be implying that was changed at the second strake.

Most boats have their teething problems. Dale’s 43 has had the bustle extensively modified, motors rebuilt, and they are still trying to get it right. Weight was moved around in Alex’s boat along with some glasswork done. Do not even start on the combinations of height, centers, and toe on the outboard boats. Even the 38 FURY boat has taken time to get right.

Numbers sell boats, and it has to be the top speed. Alex’s boat ran 125 the first time out, best speed ever 127. The silver boat runs 130. But props are often changed for daily use.

But don’t take my word for it. I encourage you to call Doug, Doug Jr., Gary, JT, and Grant and get your questions answered directly from the guys involved. PM me if want their numbers.

Brad Holbrook.

where do i start. i intailly was going to have 'big john' rig the boat, but john kept putting my off since he was working on whittiers boat. grant called my and said that DW told him i was looking for a rigger. that turned out to be a LIE. grant was really looking for work. to bad i didn't get the whole story right away.

so i went to grants. he tells me about all the supercat he has rigged and understands the heat exchanger, so i felt comfortable. everything was new except for the drives that colabella just got done redoing. grantt does a pretty job on the overall rig job. told him i want to run heat exchangers and he said fine he's done that before. you were there that first day, we sat there for several hrs trying to get the boat to run. first it was overheating?? not too mention that grant asked me to lie to DW cause he didn't want anyone around for the test. next week after grant can't figure out the cooling system and he pulls the thermostats and runs the motors ice cold, and we make a few passes? boat runs 136 and here you go dave, as i'm pushed out the door.

the first time i take the boat out, i put it back on the trailer to find 3 out of 4 exhaust trim rings missing ?? appearently some one put them in with 1.5" wood screws? thru bolting would have been nice. i re-plumb the entire heat exchanger which was done backwards, add expansion tanks, fix the exhaust trim rings and go out agian. this time at well over 100 she hooks real bad. i stop open the left hatch and theres metal dust everywhere. it seems that when YOU GUYS bolted the shiftable crashboxes to the flywheels YOU forgot to torque them. agian all the motors and trans where new and grant told me he had experience assembling this kinda of hardware.

and yea i called grant about this, and you know what he said, the same BS you trying to say that it wasn't grants fault. YOU guys are the one that assembled the pieces??? they werenew in the boxex still. when i tried to call agian grant would not even get on the phone. so i sent him a letter stating what happened and asked him to repair the damage that he caused. grants reply was to have his cuban lawyer buddy threaten me if i kept posting 'negative' comments he come after me. so i took the boat to someone else, had SCS rebuild the pressure plate asembly and thought i was done with the gremlins, WRONG! we were out testing and broke 2 lifters ???

this was odd. yea yea,my engine builder isn't a "marine" builder, he just does stuff for nascar so what does he know. well after we do a little more investagating, grant switched valve covers for a set of low profile ones cause of header issues, ok. well these new valve covers had oilers in them and agian someone forgot to LOCKtite the setscrew and they all fell out. and atleast one or two of them got tangled up in the valvesprings causin them to bind and break a lifter. this pisses me off even more and then you have the balls to bad mouth the engine builder?

then after all that, i go to my first race in st cloud. as we're craning the boat onto the trailer, i notice the the lifting eyes are actually pushing in on the hull. well it turns out that DW when he added the height to the deck for inboards the top 4" that was out of the deck mold, on the transom face was foam. i'm no rocket scienetist but if i was mount lifting eyes and drilling thru someones transom, i sure i could tell the difference between foam and plywood. not so with you 2 idiots.


THE ONLY THING I GOT IN OVER MY HEAD WITH WAS DEALING WITH THAT CON-MAN grant!!

other than that, i guess you haven't been watching much racing?? that "primer boat" won 4 out of 5 events, out paced all the fountians at the SBI events, including the taboo fontain with RIK's drives on it. and even after GB was busting my balls in sarasota about not just putting O/Bs, we almost caught him running in a catlite.

so yea i'm a "lost cause" when it comes to listening to your BS! i was busy getting my boat running right.
and please don't throw, look at grant he's a world champ crap. GB had you guys beat, sorry for him that he had engine trouble. as for others who have shared my fate, there are quite a few but i only speak for myself.

Kevin, is this the same guy who DW told me had a pair of 780 hp naturally aspirated engines and his boat was going to haul but? However when the boat got wet, the engine power mystery dropped to 700 or less as the boat did not go as fast as they expected a set of 780's to run? Were the engines dyno'd?

While I could not be less interested in his dealings with Grant, they are his dealings and I have to respect his side of the story as he lived it and he paid for it. Along with Jim Dyke's work on the bottom which I know was not his fault.

As to his comments on racing in SBI in a class which must have a lot of competition, well someone had to be there I guess and as if he has a reason to pound his chest for he defeated a V bottom with Arnesons (which on this site is a negative thing to have on a boat in the first place) then more power to him. I'm sure his Merc drives are superior.

Maybe he just has the wrong package to go fast? I mean being an enclosed cockpit is worth 10 mph over an open at these speeds and his boat is way slower than the 30' Skater which is a pleasure boat that runs on a little salt water lake called the San Francisco Bay.

Isn't the open cockpit with the 600 Merc package faster also?

Lets get this straight because i've been sitting back quietly watching you bad mouth Grant on this site and others. It's funny how you are THE ONLY ONE who has ever had a problem with Grant or his work.

For those that don't know, My names Kevin and i work for Grant's Custom Rigging and am speaking on my own behalf.

Grant has done boats for Doug and he has always been happy with what's been done so of course he would suggest that you bring the boat here. There were boats lined up at that time to get rigged so we weren't even actively looking for work. If Grant was looking for work, what is wrong with that anyways? That's what we do, work for a living.

Grant has rigged a lot more boats than one supercat, i don't know what that has to do with anything anyways. There were issues with the cooling system that were quickly solved. Do you think a custom boat, THE FIRST ONE EVER, is not going to have some teething problems? I can understand some frustration but Grant offered to help you with anything that went wrong with the boat. YOU took the boat to another shop without us even seeing what the problems really were so how do we know whats wrong??? You were not pushed out the door by any means, your boat was finished and you took it. If there is a problem with something we did, it gets fixed no questions asked. But again, please name a shop that would pay for another shop to work on a boat WITHOUT EVER SEEING WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT IN THE FIRST PLACE???

The custom CMI tailpipes come with their own trim rings and hardware. We installed them and you said they fell off. Okay, so sight unseen, Grant buys a set of Stainless Marine trim rings that are beefier and sends them out to you with polished #14 screws. I don't know anything about your heat exhanger being "backwards" or your re-plumbing the entire thing, sounds like more BS to me.

As far as the supposed loose flywheels go, Grant told you to bring the boat back to us and we would check it out, instead you took the boat to another shop and wanted us to pay for it i believe. So how do we know what was wrong? We never had a chance to even look at it. We didn't even install the flywheels, we outsourced that to a local engine builder. You're leaving out the fact that when you brought the boat back to us, you mashed the shifters so bad it pulled the cables apart. We also replaced those without question even though it was your fault.

The only threats have come from your end as far as i can tell. The "cuban lawyer buddy's" name is Frank Areces and he is a fellow SBI racer. The only reason he got involved was because of you sending threatening letters to the shop about us owing you money for work another shop did. Come to find out, suing people is a hobby for you.

I said nothing bad about how the motors were assembled, they actually "looked" nice. What i'm talking about is the fact that a marine engine and a "nascar" engine (since when do they use big blocks?) are two different animals requiring different engine setups and powerbands.

So now we have to fix the motors because the wrong parts are put on them for a marine application. We are not engine builders, we're riggers, so we had a local engine builder change the valve covers to ones that will work when he did the flywheels. This is something that should've been done by your engine builder before they even came to our shop. We have never had a problem with Chief or Mercury power in this manner.

It's funny that out of every DW built, your's is the only one to have all of these issues. If the lifting eyes are pulling in, maybe your lifting straps are too short? I would think with your crane experience you would know how to properly size a set of lifting straps?

I don't get to watch much racing, I'm too busy here at the shop rigging boats. So you almost caught GB in a cat lite when you're in a smaller boat with more power?? Awesome job man...on a level playing field you couldn't compete with GB in any way shape or form. I don't need to bring up the fact that Grant has won 3 national championships and last years World Championship in one of the most competitive classes in offshore racing against someone who's been running in the class for over 20 years.

The only BS is you coming on these forums bad mouthing Grant with childish insults but conveniently leaving out all of the facts and changing the story. You tried to get lawyers involved and didn't even have a case. So i guess you still feel the need to bash Grant after 3 years since all of your other lawsuits didn't pan out.

Yes it is. skaterdave's boat was originally designed to run Arneson's which is why it had no step in the rear. He bought the boat from Doug but did not modify it to accept #6 drives, i don't know what went on at that end, that's between Dave and Doug Wright. I don't know how fast skaterdaves 32' is now but the 600 merc boat is a fantastic all around boat...simple, effective, accelerates like a bat out of hell and it hasn't been set up to run a fancy top speed number yet only topping out at 130mph.

Quoted from Ryan Beckley
"The speed thing is funny....everyone asks about my 24' which has stock motors and runs in the 90' but I sure ave outrun several 100+mph V-bottoms and cats in it......."

Hey Ryan, remember a certain trip we made around Key West years back at one of the World Championships. You driving, GB on the sticks and myself and someone else in the back when we ran a Cigarette with some blower motors out of the harbor and beat him. Now that was a really fun ride. :ernaehrung004:

Grant will do what he can to keep the customers happy. I have worked with him in the shop and at races doing just this. However, there is NO WARRANTY as the environment these boats operate in is uncontrollable. I do not know anyone in the marine rigging business that will.

I believe Dave borrowed a license plate from another boat owner in the shop to get the boat home, then was going to use his out of state address to avoid paying taxes or something. Correct?

If you are so unhappy, sell the boat. And why a 32 with inboards to race with anyway? Why not step up to a spec class?

Kevin, maybe you could get a list of the boats and happy customers together, I know its extensive.

Hey Rick, you on here? I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

And don't discount the relationship between Gary and Grant. These guys are a lot closer and have much more respect for each other than you think.

Yeah basically the list of happy customers would be everyone except skaterdave. It's unfortunate that there were any issues at all.

If your referring to me, I dont get involved in threads started by Jim Darr. Nice to see he's already been banned.
I came in long after all this went on. From the stories Dave has told me, Id be PO'd also. Kevin: You admitted to outsourcing the work, but did you not check it when it came back to the shop to make sure it was OK. Did you contact the company that did the shoddy work to see if they would pay for the damages. Thats just bad quality control. Dave hired Grant to do the work. If it was outsourced, the final product is still the responsibility of Grant.
Dave put a lot of time in it setting it up and puting it back together correctly. Props, spacers, boxes, rev limiters and testing time.
This was a major project for many involved and in the end, the boat won some races and runs great. Its not a skater 368, but it's not the price of one either, so just having one in our sights is an accomplishment, and if you've ever raced against one you'd know what I mean. Plus, we were set up to run less then 117 so we wont break out. Amsoil is capable of running much faster then that.
Sarasota was a great race. Passing all the fountians after they squeezed us and almost ran us off the course, then getting around Taboo was a huge thrill. Anytime I'm on the racecourse with the 750 teams is huge thrill, even if the boat i'm driving catches fire (another boat).
Daves boat is currently for sale, I know Dave wants to step up to 750 class, where I'd love to be also, just need Sponsorship $.

yea what rick said !!

kevin, having spending 10's of thousands of dollars with someone i would expect them to atleast get on the phone with me and talk about the problems. your boy did never answered the phone after i told him intially what happened and the only person that did was sherry and gave me a song & dance where grant was and why he didn't wouldn't call me back. what was i supposed to do sit around and wait for him to call if ever??.

kevin you got all the answers now, just to bad you didn't just fix what you guys screwed up. better yet now your blaming someone else that you hired to work on my boat which grant said he did??!!??

first i'm a lair, now it was someone else that screwed it up that you guys hired cause you didn't know how to rig it ?? second why would anyone after learning that the shop they took their boat to get worked on had other people outside your control and my knowledge work on it and expect i should wait around for more of the same workmanship. i knew you hired someone to setup the raw water pump and pulleys. but like a said, i went over there and talked with grant and he assured me that he had plenty of experience with all the pieces i was putting into my boat.


ps. i will continue to share my tragic story of grant's custom rigging until i die or get paid the 4 k it took to fix things. as far as lawyers go, i've been in business for 19 yrs. it wasn't till i moved to florida that i had to use a lawyer. seems theres alot of people that forgot what means to stand behind your word and live by a handshake.

side note: i want to apologize to the taboo guys, i didn't mean any disrepect just that what a boat runs flat out is totally different than in an everyday setup. those guys helped us out in miami and i thank'em for that!!