Warrens twin clip on 28 Skater goes 135!
 

His 450r’s turned 15 1/2 x 39’s (!!!) 6400!

Skip to the 10 min mark.

Ive know Warren for 20+ yrs and he knows how to make an OB fast.

He has a 19’ STV tunnel boat that has been 131!



https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yIz7DC_7Ucs

Fix the link.

Great looking Skater, and Hell yeah, that’s fast!

RR

Thx!

For some reason Im unable to successfully post links anymore.

Red Rocket
 

Warren Duke is a great guy and committed boater.

I start to pucker at 100-105 or so in our Skater 28. 135 is hauling the mail! He has a widened hull. I wonder how much that is worth as far as stability and extra MPH. Of course Warrens years of experience must play a HUGE roll. It bothers me when I see newbies attempting these high speeds. Great job and great looking boat!

Wider tunnel helps with lift.

Another 2x150 hp on the transom helps, too.

The good thing is that he can move those engines to a bigger Skater.

I have hit 110 mph in mine with 300XS and Mercury 3-blades. Earlier owner hit 118mph with 300X and Mercury 3-blades. Hoping to close some of that gap with DeWald 4-blades this season. Warren is in a different class.

He says in the video that the hull is Kevlar and approx 2200 lbs less power.

And yeah, Warren has been going fast for decades.

2200 lbs and Kevlar
 

I think that is what it says in the 28 Skater sales brochure that came with my boat.

That's HAULING in that thing.
We rigged one with triple 2.5OS that ran mid 120s and it was flighty. I can't imagine another 10mph.Congrats!

Not sure where you guys are getting that this standard-deck 28 is widened? It is surely the width that it was pulled from the mold (there's only one 28 mold), with a 45" wide tunnel. You can tell by the fact that the deck/cockpit width are all standard, with the same three-across rear seat in all standard-deck 28s. The only widened 28 pleasure boat Pete ever built was for his buddy Roy Schrader, who sadly passed in 2021. That 12" widened flat-deck 28 is now owned by Mike LaPaglia and has a set of 450Rs on it, spending most of its time on Lake Havasu.

Definitely setup for river running and NOT any rough with that much weight on the back, but still a cool vid.

Funny, one of the things the OB hating crowd miss is, the use of Jack plates.

On my twin OB 25’ Checkmate I run w/the plates full up which put prop shafts even w/bottom.

You can do it on the IO’s but they stay there.

Hows it work when you get to dock?

I drop mine (5”) then dock it like a regular boat!

I know it's a hard core BB crowd here but those outboards screaming at 10:00 are friggin sweet.

There's probably more outboard guys on here now than inboard guys with the trend toward outboard powered offshore cats and center consoles. Every run there are pictures of show a ratio of at least 3:1 outboard rigs to inboard rigs. As for me, I've owned 13 outboards (which included 3 different 28 Skaters and 1 30' Skater) and 11 inboards, with my current 3 boats being all inboards. I wasn't being derogatory towards the thread, just trying to point out that this 28 is not widened, as a few had assumed.

Warren’s Skater
 

Warren had a 24 Skater that Doug Wright modified. There was talk about it getting widened in a second stage. Don’t remember if if ever happened.

I think that’s where the confusion comes from.

I think it would be cool to drop a couple of the V12's in a bilge of a full stag boat and run 2 speed transimissions!

The reason, weight low and along the keel.

Fastest 28 skater
 

Your boat is awesome ! And run fast , but is might be the fastest skater now at this time , in ,95 the cultured vulture 28 skater ran 137 mph record speed in 2 directions measured , they ran 143 mph on single trips . This was a triple engine 3 x2,5,s .

Cultured Vulture
 

Funny, I just posted about Cultured Vulture in the Skater forum.

That guy is always the king....

Joe

A friends boat, not mine.

I remember the Skaters from back in the era of triples and that speed does not surprise me.

Those hulls seem similar to the smaller STVs, in that they are so efficient that they just keep going faster the more power you add.

Pretty sure the Warren Duke camp is more interested in current day/power rigs.

We are interested both in Warren and in Cultured Vulture.

We had a 24 with triple 260s and the boat never saw 130 on a radar gun. We pulled 129 several times but that was with 32 3 blade cleavers, "only thing available", and 1.87 gears. Today we would have had 62 or 75 gears and 40 pitch propellers. Pretty sure we could have picked up another 10.

Joe

Joe, in your opinion aren’t those totally different rigs these day?

Id think to get to that level, in that era, they’d be race boats?
And today you’re doing almost the same thing w/stock motors on pump gas that idle and shift?

Similar to current muscle cars compared to what he had to do “back in the day”?

I had a customer last wk that has a 800 hp, supercharged Dodge 4 wd pickup that goes light to light quicker than his ‘25 mid engines Vette!

W/full leather interior, sun roof, electronic package etc!

Look up on Youtube, there have some of modified street dodge pickups doing wheelies!

The good old days "weren't that good" when you compare what we have available today. I have shared with you what my everyday 36 has done-no comparison but its a bit more expensive as well.

Joe

Lol, I'd say a "bit more expensive" is an understatement Joe! I was a huge fan of outboard boats when they were the "working man's" performance boat. Now that they're the "rich man's" performance boat, I'm not such a fan. I paid $55k for my first 28/280 rig which was a '97 that I bought in '01. It was a top-tier outboard rig at the time (110+ mph). Fast forward to the current outboard market and you'll be looking at spending $300k-$400k for a 4-year-old top-tier outboard boat (125+ mph).

A difference I would add, back in the day, we could build/hot rod our own motors ourselves.

These days…..

Dale, that's fair.

Outboards have changed a lot. The 2.5 280s were quite compromised - based on a 200 hp / 5500 rpm platform that was turned to 8200 rpm to give us those 280 hp. The price we paid was that we had to rebuild every 200 hours and listen attentively for any noise that could mean that the engine was about to grenade.

The 450R was designed for what it does and delivers the power without a sweat. Expect 1000 hours+ of trouble free ownership. QC4V engines may hit a more attractive price/performance point, but then we are back to 200 hours between rebuilds.

Mercury is playing in a different league these days. The "working man's" engines are homebrewed inboards. I suppose the off-brand engine builders qualify as well.

I grew up in a 1977 17' 3" Avenger with a 2.4/200. After the second blown powerhead, Mercury sent my dad the first 2.4/225 on the West Coast and that combo ran 71 mph on radar. I LOVED that boat (I was only 7-11 years old when we had it). Before I was born, my dad raced for Fred Kiekhaefer back in the '60s in his 17' Power Cat and also drove the Mrs. Molly Bee in the 1/4 mile @ 117 mph (still fast by outboard drag boat standards today). I was only 2 or 3 years old sitting in the Ron Jones cabover hydro (Mrs Molly Bee) in the attached pic, But you get the point, outboards are in my blood. Everything has changed in the last decade though. Gone are the days of an inexpensive outboard that can hang with the light-power inboard guys. Now, the outboard boats cost nearly the same as the inboard boats, but they're no closer to keeping up than they were 20 years ago. And to your point, I can't tell you how many 2.5s/3.0s I pulled and replaced through the years. I wouldn't know where to even start yanking a 2.6 or 4.6 4 stroke powerhead off to replace .
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.off...7f0d3b873e.jpg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.off...82bebc41ad.jpg
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.off...0ea6b4d14c.jpg

What a cool story and history!
Thx for sharing.

Great pixs too.

And I thought I grew up w/a gifted boating childhood!

Loved the lines of the Avengers and you’re right on the drag OB speed.

That’s still fast!

Dale,

The difference is simplicity. Its WAY more expensive to own, insure, and operate an inboard boat. I logged just under 600 hours of combined run time on my boats with 450s and 400Rs last year. I was down for 2 days with the 400R boat, Performance Boat Center had a new motor in stock so we swapped a power head and they had me running again by the weekend. I replaced a 450 power head (also a two day down time) and I made it to the Lake Cumberland Poker Run on time. I could never duplicate the cost or repair times if I had inboards and went down with a motor, drive, or transmission. Been there and done that-if I could afford a new 1100 boat, you can bet that we would have it, but I would also need an outboard boat for "simple performance boating".

Cool pictures of you as a kid, its no wonder you were addicted to the drag stuff.

Joe

And to skater30, a Ron Jones, 3 point, cabover is maybe the most beautiful hull to ever come off a drafting table!

Yes Joe, it's the only reason I got into a drag hydro - it was a bucket-list deal I had to get out of my system. I'd only wished my dad were still alive when I did it.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.off...100878b2a3.jpg
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.off...ec0ac7d71.jpeg

I agree, I think they're better looking than the outboard drag boats of today - and that was over 50 years ago!

Dale, you nailed it right there.

4-stroke owners don't need to know how to remove a powerhead unless they put the kind of hours on their boats that Joe does.

That's the core of the Mercury Racing outboard value proposition. That's what you pay for when you pick that route.

Curious how many hours were on each power head that they need replacing?

Yep.

And what happened to them too.

The 450 was one on my Doug Wright. It had approx 400 hours and I pounded a main bearing out of it. As soon as I heard the knocking, I shut it down. I now have a spare power head. The 400R was one on my tri-toon and it had less then 100 hours on it. It had an electrical issue that caused it to detonate, broke a piston, and the rod proceeded to saw the motor in half. The power head was warrantied and we were back on the water in short order.

I have seen 450s with 2000 hours on them and verados with 10,000 hours them. I am now running the new Mercury Racing Oil which is thinner then the previous.

I can't thank the guys at Performance Boat Center enough for taking care of me like they do.

Joe

The blown drag hydro is awesome. That is skill and guts, extremely impressive, and the outboard is also very cool.

Nice to hear they covered it. When you think about it a 450HP motor that costs,,,, what somewhere in the 60K range should be reliable. I will say the new 300's, 450's V-8's and 400 V10's are amazing when you look at what they weight.

As a used buyer I just wish performance V's with OB's were more popular, the cats are cool but the insurance will make them unaffordable for me.

The cost of converting and the engineering to try and make it right means I'll be in I/O's for a while. Not that it's a big deal at least I can work on them. Maybe I should look into converting the FORD racing Gozzila motor! LOL.