Skater 30 / ILMOR Indy Upgrade
 

Skater & ILMOR have been working together closely on upgrading my boat to ILMOR's new Indy drive. The retrofit is the first for ILMOR as the other boats with Indy drives were sold as Gen 4 engine / drive packages. I have Gen3 engines which has required a team effort from all parties involved in order to see this retrofit project thru. Luckily both companies are located only a few hrs apart from one another. Ultimately it should pave the way for other ILMOR owners to upgrade to the Indy drive resulting in an even more reliable turnkey package.

The Skater is my 2nd ILMOR powered boat & they've been an excellent option for me. Over the past 5yrs I've received unmatched sales, service & support from the folks at ILMOR.

Skater has been working their magic as well. There were lots of options when it came to retrofitting the new drives but Peter & his staff aren't taking any shortcuts and there have been several instances where they have taken it upon themselves to go the extra mile which is the reputation Skater is known for.

While I've missed several of my favorite poker runs to date I consider it a small sacrifice in the big scheme of things. Allowing Skater & ILMOR the time they require to engineer the upfit will ultimately pay dividends in the end.

My goal being a well rounded turnkey, reliable, bulletproof package.

Great stuff! Keep the pics coming. Looks like it will be an incredible package! Thanks for sharing.

I've been begging for some pics but those guys are too busy to take them, download them, upload them & send them to me.

If I don't get my boat back soon it will be b/c I kept pestering them for the pics! Right??

oh yea, it will be worth the wait for sure.

Is the driveline 4 bolts or is that just an adjustable template to line everything up??

Now you need a trailer extension to protect those expensive drives. Do you have a wraparound windshield or canopies?

The boalts are strictly for alignment / mock up purposes. My engines were too far forward to accommodate a plugin & too far back to install a driveshaft now that a tranny has been added so it's basically a yoke & flange on both sides w/ a coupler in between, The gap will be half what you see pictured. Those were taken early on.

Cat,

You know all Skater trailers come stock w/ such. See pic in post 1!

Yes I'd love to have a wrap around windscreen but if I did that in addition to the drives I'm thinking I'd have more money in it than the fastest 32 listed in the classifieds!

How many hours did you get before you broke those IMCO drives? LOL

They never broke but the gears were spent after 50hrs! Sometimes uppers, sometimes lowers.

Yeah, looking good michael. You told me about this sat on the funrun. Great to see the pics. good looking drives and I hope they hold up.

Oops I missed it. :o

Looking good nascat !

Thank you sir! Only no sooner do I catch up to you & you will be upgrading leaving me behind again.

Since you aren't claiming ownership of the 36 Pier 57 just sold I believe I know where you are headed!

Good to see Mike Hope you can do some boating this year.:drink:

Thats such an awesome rig, Ive had a chubbie looking it for the last hour Nascat.

Youll definitely pick up speed with the indy and your headaches of drive maintenance are history with the indy.
I was looking at this drive at Teague and its a work of art.

Practically no parasitic loss like 14 HP I read somewhere
Its stouter than an NXT.

Are you going mechanical or digital shift? I would think that gen 3 imposes mechanical, but I could be wrong.

Oh its been out a while now and I havent heard of one breaking yet either. Only the first one having a minor assembly issue that was solved in a day or so.

Im incredibly impressed with my Ilmor product and even a single 710 is enough to give my buddys a vulgar display of power in a 28ft v.

- your rig is going to be supersonic chief-


I wanna ride!

Uncle Dave

Congrat's on the upgrade, I know you've been wanting it for a while.:drink:

Will it be ready for Destin?

UD- Thx for the kind words. I remember watching your ride come together & she sure turned out nice.

I'm thinking no to the electric shift b/c the Gen3 710 isn't set up to accomodate that but cables & a velvet smooth tranny will satisfy me just fine.


Bubba- Long time no see or speak, hope you are well. Destin is 3 weeks away & I'm really not sure when I'll have the boat back. I have to go to the race track the weekend before which will make picking it up & hetting some seat time prior difficult. And at the moment I have no crew, 2 of my main guys wives had babies like a week apart so I'm thinking they are both grounded.

Stay tuned............

I know of a willing crew member. I can give you his name and number if you would like.:drink::drink:

Ian Hawkins said only 4hp parasitic loss.

Whatever it is its astonishingly low.

a # 6 takes between 80 & 100 HP to turn
Ive seen bravo #'s around 40-55
NXT is probably at or better than a bravo- maybe not.

The indy can hold power in between an nxt and a 6 and is like half the weight of a 6 to boot. That #6 is like clamping a collapsing star on the back of your boat.

The indy... Ive seen from 14-24 hp loss quoted
4 would be just incredible.


Sooo.... heres the thing- Dustin Whipple has been testing merc 6 & 700's and says they simply dont meet the HP spec out of the box the last 700 was like 30 HP down in stock form.

Take these few ponies down- take another 20-40 hp off the engine with the parasitic drive loss- then take another 150-200 pounds off each assembly because of the aluminum blocks and lighter indy and the ilmor package has a serious advantage in both weight and net HP to the props.

At approximately 1 mph for each 20hp - do the math Nascat

Like I said Nascats rig is going to be f-ing rocket ship, and able to run down just about anything. A 725 27 daytona with indies goes like 155- ridonkulous. I dont want to make any predictions but Nascats rig is going to be absolutely epic.

Everything but turbines are gonna be looking at the ass of that setup from now on.

Add all these details up- then add in the running efficiency, and mileage and historical reliability. (some dude has like 600 hours now with nothing but fluid changes)

- he's got damm near the ideal rig.

All I need to know now is if Nascat has a sister?

Come on- dont forget about your friends here buddy!


Uncle Dave

UD

You are hilarious. If 135mph becomes 140mph great but I'm really not expecting much more out of it. I don't really care about top speed much anymore just to have enough margin between top speed & cruising speed to be able to run 100-110 w/o killing it & I think I'm good there. Previously 100mph was the sweet spot cruising speed. Boat just took a set & was on rails.

Sorry to disappoiont no sister!

More pics to follow early next week. Making good progress these days!

Guess you dont want my crew member suggestion.

Totally phat ride.

I always wanted a big cat-
You hear that....thats the sound of envy typing. (and I have a f-ing cool boat)

I hear you on the top speed thing- not because Im even remotely in your league- but because I run in the ocean a lot and I run out of length and livable water before I run out of power. I seldom see 80 to Catalina out of my total comparatively paltry 91mph it's just too rough and midrange bursts are almost as fun as top speed for me.

I found another mph by removing the arch- but radar = safety.
I cross the port of long beach the shipping lanes every time Im out, and I always have patchy fog.
Plus Im not gonna lie to you, Im gonna be honest - from time to time my group will do a little drinking,
I dont do drunken boating, which means occasionally I need to come back at night.
A good couple of hours in the "stabin cabin" after a "bar tour" - and Im good to go.

The only captain with better situational awareness than me is captain f-ing KirK.



Indies - I guess I look at it as follows...

I, like you, I burned through a gear set at 54 hours (teague platinum is nearly identical to Imco SC)
Its sound logic to figure if its 5K to do the upper and lower on my rig its about that for yours- per drive.

Maybe you can get a full rebuild a bit cheaper than I can - but thats the teague price and I know its done right (but not cheap)
Ocean is rougher than lakes- when I lake boat I get longer gear life.

I do between 50 & 100 hours a season- not sure about you.

This rebuild cost pushes your hourly rate off the chart, plus the problem of never knowing if one will pop

The indys will likely never need rebuilding or if they do it'll be a long interval maybe 900-1000 hours or possibly only oil changes.
A 5 MPH pickup with the same HP is huge. Im really curious to see if you can get that. Racers pay huuuge money for 5 mph.
It also makes the Ilmor package faster than the Merc/NXT package with better mileage and no blowers.

You gotta give me a ride in that thing sometime- dont make me beg man.

BTW:you didnt rule out an eligible daughter- my mom and my 3rd grade teacher can give excellent references.....



UD

Mike have a daughter??? I dont believe so, if he does she certainly isnt of age.:lolhit:

:bsflag: These are gears and shafts and bearings turning corners. Let's see data, not opinion. I ani't buyin' it. And Dustin is an independent voice with an objective opinion?

Actually I do have data. (well its ilmors data not mine)

http://www.powerboatmag.com/ilmor-ma...ern-drive.html

http://www.bigbadboat.com/2009/02/il...premieres.html

The ilmor uses many design features to accomplish this reduction in parasitic loss- its not magic its modern design and metallurgy combined with money

As for engines - never heard of you chief, heres a newsflash- Dustin may be independent but is vastly more credible than you and has very few peers in the engine building department, so unless your the worlds best kept secret <doubt it>
I dont see how anything that comes out of your mouth counts for anything but your own lone opinion as well.

Several guys have documented the merc # directly from their boats to his dyno in person.
An interesting note though is that he says all the Teague engines he's dynod have been over spec.

Let the magic fly from your fingertips and do your own f-ing homework at least a tiny bit before calling BS on me.

Lets see your data now.




Uncle Dave

"Originally Posted by Whipple Charged
What in the world does a Kilo record have to do with a TCM800EFI?

The fact of the matter is extremely simple, and I can back it up 100%. The TCM800 EFI, as it is shipped makes well over 800HP in standard correction, which Sterling and all other custom engine mfg's use (industry standard). Some can vary that number and make they're own correction factor, but using Superflow's, which takes baro, temp, humidity reading shows this motor makes a consistent 850hp. I know this because I just spent 1 full week on the dyno, and nearly 100 runs on one and never did it make less than 800, not even close. In fact, it makes 820-830 SAE HP which is what OEM's are suppose to use, such as Mercury Marine.

Now lets talk about Mercury Marine. I just spent 3 weeks with a 600SCI and 1 week with a 700SCI on the dyno. Standard correction factors, the best runs for the 600SCI was 580HP. The best for the 700SCI, 669HP. I do have to give it to Merc though, the 525 consistently makes 545HP. SAE numbers fall far below except for the 525 EFI.

So, when talking about numbers, some may fudge, some may not run on good dyno's, etc, but I know for a fact that the TCM 800 is understated on power, as is the TCM 900. Both make consistently 25-50HP more than advertised.

Dustin Whipple"










Curious what your experience in the dyno room or anywhere else shows.

So Ive gotten 3 independent data points to back my post now, and you've supplied about as much useful info as the Apache Chief character in the super-friends.



Uncle Dave

Hurry up and get that thing back. He's 7 days old. His first ride needs to be in a Skater.

Thats transmission loss. Total loss with drive is around 30hp

How does that compare w/ the total loss hooked up to a bravo style Teague or IMCO? Do you have any such data??

UD

If you want to make thje trek to the east coast I'll give you a ride, maybe even let you drive!

I'm as anxious as anyone to experience the difference in performance & handling. The part I dread is starting all over from a prop testing standpoint especially when they are 2x+ as much. Hope my fellow boaters & Skater can get me close b/c once I pick the boat up from Skater my propeller inventory for testing will be gone.

A few pics of the tedius work that goes into mocking up the engine & drive in order to get the proper driveline angle & alignment resulting in the fabbing up of new motor mounts

Searching...the last number I read was 55HP @ 5500 it was more at 6K.

I saw a comprehensive breakdown that used a dyno to spin a series of drives and backcompute the loss. - I'm looking for it.

Im pretty lucky - for a nominal fee Teague shows up with a truck full of props at the lake

Uncle Dave

I was hoping IlmorDude would have some test data w/ regard to h.p. loss thru a bravo style drive w/ Ilmor angine in front of it.

Sounds like you have awesome resources when it comes to prop resources.

Cool upgrade! Congrats.

Give me til tuesday around noon and i'll see what i came come up with.

Comparing parasitic drag in a Bravo setup to parasitic drag in an Indy (or NXT or #6) setup would be interesting, but not necessarily relevant. The Bravo package has nowhere near the torque capacity of the Indy. A more relevant comparison would be between the Indy, the NXT and the #6 packages, including transmissions.

NASCAT - Good luck with the process. Your photos remind me of where I was with my 725/Indy installation back in April! At least I didn't have the rear engine mount/drive coupler installation issue; my package installion was very straightforward.

My reasoning for asking what the bravo parasitic h.p. loss is wasn't from a comparing apples to apples of similar drives but an exact comparison between what I'm removing & replacing it with. IlmorDude says loss of 30hp through the entire driveline I was hoping to know what the loss was w/ the previous setup.

I don't know that I can say your custom install was easier but I think you were more so starting w/ a clean sheet of paper once you filled in all your stringer & transom holes.

I haven't received / posted any of the reworked hatch scoops pics that was required for header clearance yet but that should shed some light on the domino effect of engine relocation in order to achieve the proper driveline angle! So yes I agree a retro fit like mine involves a different set of hurdles & then we can multipy those hurdles x2 engines!

Its relevant in that every HP you deliver to the water means something.

To date almost all Ilmor packages are packaged with Bravos- "recovering" lost power and gaining reliability are both selling points IMO.


UD

You can join me in lobbying Ilmor for a 4" shortie. Say, about 14" or 15" from the crank CL to the propshaft CL? I'd love to get my engine back down into the bottom of the bilge and remove "Make header blisters" from the job list...