Question on a 27 Fountain
 

A friend of mine has a 27 Fountain (no step) with a N/A 540 in it. He really never dialed the boat in last year and his best speed was 79.8 gps.

Well this year he is doing some testing on a drive that a friend built . Bravo /XR conversion with a Imco nosecone. Well the problem is the boat won't run anything over 75 and he says it likes to blow the prop out when he corners.
It is running the same rpm (5700) as last year...were did the speed go ?
Do nosecones not work well with Fountains ?
I'm ruling out the XR gears slowing it down because I put some time on that drive and I think the nosecone actually helped me.
He's just very frustrated and plans on pulling the motor out next week to change the cam and do some welding and porting on the heads (airflow technician for a living)
Any ideas ?

There was an article on bob's nosecones in a magazine I read, i think it was family performance. I will try and find it for you this weekend as it is down at the beach. But i believe that it stated that nosecones can sometimes increase drag at certian speeds, usually lower than 80 or 85 mph, and reduce speed. What type of a drive was he running before the xr conversion and was the upgrades just internals or was it the case as well?

Thunderdan,
last year he was running a standard Bravo. The XR that he is using just has the XR gears in the upper.

I do also remember hearing that they can add drag. I figured in my boat (real conservative X, 80gps) I could see an improvment, but Fountains have a pad and I'm sure the X is allot higher than mine.

Post this question on the Fountain Forum. There was talk about this very thing on a 29 a week or so ago.

Ron

That was my 29 Fever. The guy I bought it from put a nose cone on, and I think it slowed it down. He said he was getting 73-74 on the speedo before the nose cone. So far, I haven't done better than 67+ on the GPS. (He completely disconnected the speedo, so there's no way to get a direct comparison.) I've been told that if it's not installed exactly right, it can be worse than no nose cone.