Bravo one modifications
 

I am "blue printing" my bottom while I wait for new lifters to get here. I have been planning to install a set of nose cones on my Bravo lowers and i'm wondering if anyone has removed the skegs and to what effect... I don't care about prop protection or affects on low speed steering I am only interested in reducing drag. All my "science" tells me that removing transom lift and possibly lowering prop slip a little bit would be positive. Please .... notice I've said please... Assume i'm right about this and simply address the question relating to the skegs... Does anyone have any experience? I've been on boats with out skegs or mostly without and steering wasn't affected that I noticed. They just didn't go nearly fast enough to have any significant impact and none of those boats would even have benefited much with a little less bow in the water. I've removed roughly 300 pounds from the engine compartment and I am trying now to take advantage of this helping the lighter load still set down in the water and affect the attitude. I hate the look of these nose cones and the amount of time it takes to get them all purdied up again after installing just to have a much bigger under water foot print... wondering it maybe I can get close to the same results minus the cone with some tweaks...

What’s the boat and how fast ?

On top of what JT asked, what is your X-dimension on the boat?

If it’s a straight v, taking 300#s out of the rear isn’t going to help with getting
the bow out of the water, I can tell you that taking nose cones off of a low 90 mph boat didn’t change top speed but did add 3 mph to a 3500 rpm cruise speed.

I really doubt there’s a noticeable speed gain to be found by removing skegs

31 Sonic 88mph. Its a 96 and the drives are quite deep. The weight will be "adjusted" when the batteries are moved aft I've just been working on other things. Just by chance we had a customer come in last week who ran over a concrete break wall at some entrance to the St claire river. I am in the process of using those nose cones to check exactly how much "extra" aluminum there is that can be removed. It's a lot. And since it's both sides I can't imagine it wont reduce transom lift. I've had several people tell me that high performance lowers will add top speed... Imcos or Sport master... I have several Bravo one lowers to mess with and both the ones on the boat now have minor damage from hot boat last year... so I'm just gonna do it. The math says if I can reduce the drag on these lowers I'll have less bow in the water.... I can trim the gauges up to 9 and nothing slips... Fastest speed was in ideal conditions and I didn't even know until later that night when I pressed the tell tale. I've already removed the hook from strake to strake and left the fairly significant hook alone for now between the chime and said strake.

I've adjusted my plan to cut the front edge back a 1/3 and then trim the bottom 2" off. I'm doing as much as I can to hopefully free up the bow a little more.

Wilson custom marine. They blueprint lowers among other things.

What are you running for prop rotation?

Spinning them out the boat settles down at lower speeds and top speed is the same. If I spin them in the boat is much more prone to start porpoising. I'm in the process right now of finishing the bottom and I did the drives too. I'm planning to try spinning them in again to see what effect true bottom has on the results.

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chop chop
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So now I have multiple sources telling me I am losing speed with the dual water pick ups... Which does make sense, because when I installed the new bravos I lost a little over 1mph. I just assumed it was because the drives were brand new and a little tight. I had been running the boat just fine with classic bravos with no issues with cooling... but the drives were older and didn't like the new power. It's a 31 Sonic and the drives are pretty wet so I'm not worried about getting the water, But reading on some blue printing techniques I read that just blocking one side of the lower pick up.. the side that the prop is slapping down onto the water... supposedly this is good for adding speed... And the other side doesn't have much affect at all on speeds.. And this would be kind of insurance when speeds start approaching the triple digits...

Blanked out my lower water pick ups and saw no gain at all running about 85mph...