My first Formula
 

Hello all

Been quietly watching this forum for years and a few weeks ago spotted this 292 on here. A few weeks later and its mine! I am sure you all saw when the previous owner posted it on here. Jeff was a pleasure to work with on purchasing the boat I can't thank him enough for putting up with my million questions and picture requests. He took amazing care of her and I plan on doing the same. Took me and the family a few hours to get her cleaned up from the 2500 mile trip from Michigan to Seattle area. We took it out for our first run yesterday on Lake Washington and I have nothing but good things to say about this boat! Formula builds a beautiful boat and the previous owners took amazing care of this boat.

As soon as I can get my old boat (Mirage Trovare 257) sold I plan on using that money to upgrade the 292 with full hydro steering and K planes! I would love to hear what other 292 owners are doing for upgrades?

I look forward to many years with this boat. I have found this forum to be a wealth of information. I will definitely be posting some questions and hope to do mod threads when I do upgrades!
Anyways here are a couple photos!

Howard

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nice. How fast? What motors? I totally want that. Those colors are amazing.

Beautiful boat and congratulations on the new "Bird" welcome to the family.

That is a nice looking ride, congrats!! How do you like the Eagle trailer? I had one before and it pulled great and was low slung to avoid backing a mile down the ramp to offload. Mine had surge brakes, which I did not particularly care for.

Ongrats on that new to you formla! I enjoyed mine back then!

Congratulations and welcome to the Formula Family (the "Bird Cage").
Great boats and great group of owners!

6.2L
I Just touched 70mph on gps on the first outing! Definitely needs hydro steering and tabs for safety at that speed...
I have never seen one with this paint scheme! Very unique.

The Eagle Trailer is very nice! Very well built and heavy duty. The boat unloaded and loaded onto the trailer very easily. The surge brakes aren't the best but they do work well. I don't like the clunky-ness of them but they do haul it down well. Only complaint I have with the trailer is the bow roller has caused some damage to the gel coat. I plan on replacing the bow stop with a dual pad style like Myco uses. I will probably post pictures of that mod when I get it done.

Howard

Very nice good luck! I'm also new to Formula nice boats!

Very nice and sharp looking boat!! Welcome to the formula family. Great boats and great owners!!!

Looks great! I have a 292 as well!

Welcome to the Formula family. I love my 292 fastech. I did full hydraulic steering last year. I went with IMCO kit Helm to Stern. It was not cheap but the quality and customer service is unbeatable. I upgraded my exhaust to IMCO powerflow with stainless tails while I did the steering. The aluminum manifolds took about 250 pounds off the stern and the boat planes and gets out of the whole quicker, mid range feels stronger too. My next upgrade will be stroker small blocks and K planes. Other upgrades I did are LED bilge, cockpit and cabin lights, LED transom lights and silent thunder delete.
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I saw your post about your hydro steering upgrade when researching for my new boat! Looks like a really clean install. As soon as I sell my old boat that is the first thing on my list to purchase. If all goes as planned I will hopefully net enough from the sale of my old boat to purchase the hydro steering, K Planes, and manifold. Who did you purchase your hydro steering from?

Why did you remove the silent thunder? I currently have that on my boat and compared to my old boat its much quieter and the wife and kids like that. How much louder is your boat with it removed? What is involved in the removal? Also what did you use for led lighting on the interior of the boat? I would love to see some pictures of that too. I notice last night while cleaning the cabin lights get extremely hot when on for a few mins! Love to replace them with led to keep it cooler and safer.

Howard

I recommend super bright LEDs for the lighting. They do very well for those of us that have them.

I purchased the steering directly from IMCO. Without the silent thunder it is definitely louder but not unbearable. Between idle and 1200 rpm, I can still have conversations with passengers using outdoor voices. Throttles down, it sounds great and gives the boat more attitude. I get compliments from fellow boaters how it sounds wide open, but the IMCO manifolds definitely give it more bark and roar.. There are only 4 bolts holding it on, it weighs about 75 pounds and its very awkward, so if you're gonna take it off, get some help! I deleted it because it was going to be in the way of my steering and I hated the way it looked. Not to mention the weight reduction. The flappers were dry rotting and curling also. It ended up going in the garbage. The only picture I have of my LED's atm, the cabin LED's look very nice and are natural sunlight color, I will post more pics of my lights soon.
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Omg
 

:boat:unreal

Nice job Frank! Love the steering. I was looking at the same setup. My 292 is the exact same color scheme as yours.

So the Imco steering won't fit with the Silent Thunder exhaust?

There are two different kinds. There is the individual ram mounts and thru hull fittings for the hoses or the universal mounting bracket, which everything is integrated to give a easier install and cleaner look. The Universal bracket is a triangular shape and IMCO told me it would not clear the silent thunder. I still have the normal individual mounting bracket kit because I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep the S.T. or not, but I decided to permanently delete the S.T.

Ok thanks for the info. I really like the look of the triangular bracket like on your boat. It is a much cleaner looking install. I guess I need to pull the silent thunder off and see what it sounds like. I know I will like it but the wife and kids may not!

Did you have those drive coolers on with the silent thunder? I was considering purchasing those very soon... I doubt I will do the steering this summer as I want to keep the boat on the water as much as possible.

Howard

you can always get clamp on silencers in place of the S.T. I installed those coolers after I deleted the S.T., it had different ones before, I liked these more.

Beautiful

Thank you! I have already had the boat out 3 times and absolutely love it! Just ordered a couple drive showers for it so that will be this weekends project since the weather will be crap... Also need to get the old boat ready to sell.

The boat is equipped with a DVD player that appears to be a factory option. Do any of you happen to have a working one you want to sell? This one doesn't work and my kids aren't too happy with that.
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