Offshoreonly.com - Skater 30 / ILMOR Indy Upgrade

Looks like I might be dragging the boat to Ben Robertson @ BAR as early as New Years weekend to have the tunnel tab installed. I purchased the material last week & we've been communicating back & forth w/ Latham inorder to make sure we have everything we need. The material is 1" white Polyethelene which is a machinable yet unbreakable plastic. Like $300/ 4x8 sheet. Ben said he's fabbed up a few tunnel tabs for race boats using white Lexan which is very difficult to find & substantially more $$$. Piedmont Plastics is confident the poly will do the job.

Strongly considering losing my trim tabs & reusing the rams & pumps for the the tunnel tab. Thats what most of the communication, drawings & pics that have been exchanged back & forth w/ Latham have been about. For the type of boating I do (mostly lakes, rivers & intercoastal) I've rarely used the tabs much beyond load leveling & have never needed them to get on plane. Based on the fact we believe the added transom weight is a major contributing factor to the porpoising reusing some of the major components will certainly be a step in the right direction. It's feasible that the new tunnel tab may not weigh any more than the current 28" trim tabs I have now. Plastic vs. Alum + a tunnel tab only requires 1 trim pump.

Once the tab is completely installed (estimate 2 wks) I plan to join Ben for the testing where we will swap drive rotation & back to back the pointed nose cones one more time. My ultimate goal being finding the right combination of drive rotation, nose cone & drive height for optimum performance w/ minimal sacrifice in cruise ride quality.

Going to modify my sticks / controls to incorporate more drive trim options maybe the tab too. Currently I have one throttle mounted switch that moves both drives but as you know they don't always move the same amt up & down. Seperate switches for ea drive will allow me to sync them instead of having to take my hands off the wheel & use the dash mounted rockers.

Ben plans to reuse / adapt the trim tab indicator potentiometers that Trevor at Skater custom rigged to the new tunnel tab so it too will be a L.E.D. display within the same dash unit, just need a new 3 slot (2 - 1) face plate.

My boat came w/ Livorsi's wireless trim & tab switches on an Isotta wheel but I never used them. There seemed to be a big delay between depressing the button & actual movement which I never got comfortable with. I've since replaced my steering wheel w/ a custom wheel from Momo. It's not actually a marine wheel, similar to one we use in the race cars but I was able to adapt fairly easily. Not sure whether I'll reinstall the wireless system or not. The Isotta wheel is nice but between the flat bottom & egronomic grips it doesn't make a great boat wheel being that straight never seems to return straight.