madbeachgt

Hello one and all. I am looking to tap into the OSO Chris Cat brain trust. I recently purchased a 1986 (Build date Jan. 1986) 300 Chris Craft Cat PROJECT boat. Yes she needs a lot of work but hey they say a fool and his money (and sweat) are soon parted and lets face it boats make fools of most of us. I have a few questions for the group.

1) Does anyone have any info on Small Block powered boats? Performance? HP? Drives? Handling? I am thinking of building some 400+ Cu. In. LS motors making 600-650 HP each that are NA (naturally aspirated). I am Gemini and having a twin personality so I am 1/2 old School and 1/2 high tech. Would love input on my idea.

2) I notice most of the higher HP boats have short jack shafts. I assume that is to get weight forward to move the linear CG forward. Is this an issue with the Chris Cat. I read of one boat that the owner stated the boat ran faster with more people in the back seat.

3) I only saw one person try a tunnel tab. I use to race and understand how dangerous a tunnel tab can be on fast cats but has anyone else experimented with one to help handling at cruise speeds and help with the famous cat hop?

4) In a lighter boat (AL LS motors would be a good bit lighter then a pair of big blocks) will 600 HP be enough to get one over the 100 MPH mark. My crazy days are behind me (Lost a good friend to racing offshore) so I am not looking to be the baddest boat out there but would like a good safe cruise speed in the 70 range.

5) I notice most boats are running some variant of speedmasters. I notice that few if any have been rigged with Bravos yet AO uses them on almost all their boats. Any thoughts on Bravos on a 30 CC? I have a set of 1.5 to 1 #3's and might run them and would think they would hold up well with NA LS motors making 600-650 HP

I enjoy reading most of the posting here and will really appreciate any feed back so thank you for your time.

G

jeff32

lots of good question! I'm in a project chris cat too! what boat did you buy? where was it? I created a facebook chriscat page and there is not only a lot of info there but very knowledgeable people on there, like Rich Luhrs who co designed the shadow cat wich led to Chris cat with George Linder member of that page! many guys who raced those cats back in the day are also on that page. so they can all tell wich engine package ran how fast, inboards, outboards...
Not That I say there is nothing to find on OSO, but it went so fast on the FB page, both site will give you great answers!

please share pictures of your project here so we can all learn from your boat!

madbeachgt

Hello,

Thank you for the reply. I bought the boat in Texas. It is the red one that is all over the internet in pics. Here are some pics. It is very long and complicated story on how I ended up with it. Thanks for the heads up on FB but I am not a fan of FB at all and try to stay as far from it as possible.

jeff32

how did I missed your answer... sorry about that... I'd be curious to hear how you ended up having this boat! I called on that boat couple years ago... seems to be quite in good condition in pictures! at least compared to mine!
so what is your plan for paint, power, drives, so on and so forth ?

congrats on your project!

madbeachgt

I am still up in the air about it. I have a pair of 650 HP 540 Big Blocks with Huber gears and #3 Speedy's (For sale BTW) and they would be an easy install and put me at or slightly above 100. But I am so tired of big, heavy iron dinosaurs that everyone runs. So I am thinking of going with 416-427 LS motors making 650 HP range and I hate to say it, Bravo's and then maybe add some prochargers down the road if I NEED to go faster. I am going to bring the boat into the 21st century as much as I can when it comes to construction. My boat has foam coring in the deck but there is still a lot of dead trees in the boat. I will be redoing the transom and stringers with modern foam based coring along with any other places that have wood. And I will have one of my guys spend a day or two in the cabin with a grinder and have him grind down about 100 lbs of excess resign. Under the front deck it looks like a couple 5th graders (No disrespect to 5th graders or anyone else) did the glass work. Obviously they lived by the rule that more is better. As far as paint I will go with something way out there, white, white and more white lol. Back in the day there was a 32 Maelstrom Cat (I have owned two of them) that was in Powerboat Magazine that had a simple line of paint that turns into a bit of a splatter as it moves aft. I would love to find the pics of the boat in that issue but I can not find a copy. I Will do something similar to that in vinyl. I like boats to look clean not something busy. So that is the plan for now.

aex

I would run the 540's. In boats torque is king.
On pump gas should make close to 750/700 + na and probably close to 120 mph or better if the boat is not real heavy and check for excessive hook.

boomer

Any update