mustangmark

My new motor is pushing my boat (1989 warlock euro24) into the mid 80's I'm starting to experience a bit of chine walk. I have a couple questions regarding how I might be able to fix this or at least make the boat more stable.

I need to install hyd. steering this winter. It's all stock right now. I'm looking at either the Mayfair or Imco kits. Can I get away with a single or duel ram add-on kit? If I have to use a full hyd. kit from the helm back can I use a single ram kit? Is there a big difference in stability, steering, etc...between single or duel ram (whether its a full or add-on kit).

The other question I had was about trim tabs. I've read somewhere that chine walk can be partially eliminated by installing longer trim tabs. Is there any truth to this? The tabs I'm running right now are factory. They're 12" x 16" and look real thin and cheaply made compaired to the aftermarket ones I've seen. Does anyone have a recommendations for what length trim tabs I should be running? Thanks, Mark

ezstriper

at that speed you are going to need full Hyd and dual ram...don't shortcut there..also I would have all the lines made up with crimped on ends, not the screw together one that come with the kits...several have had bad experiances(including myself) with these...can't help on the tab question though...

Too Stroked

Chine walk is pretty much a fact of life in high speed non-stepped V-bottom hulls. For those of us that grew up with it, it’s pretty much a right of passage to learn how to deal with it. How do you deal with it? You mentioned two “boat rigging” paths that both will help, but nothing will totally eliminate it – unless of course you just drive slower.

As for hydraulic steering, full dual ram hydraulic is the preferred way to go, but you can start with single ram if you want and add the second ram later. The first ram will give you about 80% of the benefits. The big thing that hydraulic steering gives you is more precise steering control with zero torque feedback. This is important because the one thing you didn’t mention is using steering input to counteract chine walking. Basically when the boat starts to rock to starboard, you give it a touch of port helm, then the opposite going the other way. Done correctly, passengers won’t even know you’re doing it. The other thing hydraulic steering will do is dramatically reduce wear on the gamble ring and related steering / trim pivot points.

As for trim tabs, it’s not just length that matters. (Snickers all around.) Placement and orientation to the water surface also greatly affect how effectively tabs work both for planning, rough water attitude / altitude adjustment and dampening chine walk. If you do some searching in this forum, you’ll find lots of posts on those topics. Basically though, you can use trim tabs as a form of training wheels to dampen chine walk. This however will reduce speed due to increased drag. Your current size tabs sound reasonably acceptable for that size boat, so I might question how / where they’re mounted before simply jumping to a longer tab.

Hope that helps.

Tom

mustangmark

Thank you for the replies!
The information is definitely useful and appreciated! I've done a little more research on trim tabs and found that parallel vs. horizontally mounted tabs makes big difference also. Looks like I've opened up another can of worms here but after reading and being warned about what can possibly happen when a boat losses control from chine walking or the factory steering breaking at even 60 mph.....it's not worth even taking the risk!

ezstriper

and if you saw how the housing can break at the steering point you would not consider a single ram either...dual holds the drive and the steering load is divided...not just on one side...