2001 292 Fastec Single engine St. Louis LOTO
 

So, I have a contract on this 2001 292 Fastech race edition with the bare cabin and single Illmann 496. The boat is being brokered by Midwest Marine Brokerage at LOTO. I have heard of some possible issues with a 292 race edition Fastech in the St. Louis area. Is there a major issue with this boat? Something wrong with the hull? I’ve heard these boats were hard to plane, but is there another more drastic issue with this specific boat? I have not sea trialed the boat yet, that will be this week when they get it dewinterized.

Pretty sure Ed at Big Thunder had it listed a while back. Not sure if it sold or was taken off the market or moved to a different broker. You could reach out to him and see what he knows about it.

couple of things - it has been for sale for a long while like 4 years min that I know of. A person interested in it a couple years ago sent me pics to see my thoughts. I heard it was driven really hard. A scan will show that. Also I will add whomever wired the boat and cabled it really did one h ell of a very poor job when I seen the pics about 2 years ago. Actually a real chitty job. Little do they know on MPI engines one can just CAN NOT run wires & harnesses all over the place like they did. .

Will add currently I have no idea what it looks like nor what has been fixed. if has sat for this long it will need work. Fuel pumps - injector service - full lines - spark plug wires and so on. Just saying

Soo, I did a sea trial on the 292 Fastech single today. It didn’t go well. He engine sounds and runs fine, but the prop would not bite. The boat never did over 26 mph. The driver from the brokerage was doing everything he could, trimming and tabing and messing with the throttle. It has a 28P Bravo One left hand prop that is in great shape. It has a standard length drive with a 2” spacer on it. The prop shaft still seems too high in relation to the boats bottom. I know these boats were built with a high x-deminsion, but something has to get better than this. How do I get this prop into cleaner water on this boat?

What do you mean "these boats had a high X dim??" I don't think Formula even made any other single 292 Fastechs and none were pleasure boats.
The boat was pretty much a one off race boat that was converted for pleasure use. I'd say that getting the boat to drive properly is the responsibility of the owner and broker.

I would check for mechanical issue indepth -- also do you have scan reports and fuel pressure tests at the vey min that were done currently ? What do the spark plugs look like at the very least. You are looking for normal combustion on all 8

Extension box or no? I bet it used to have one if not.

No extension box. Has a 2” drive spacer with a stock length lower drive.

I know for a fact that boat has been for sale for at least 10 years.

+1 on the extension box theory. How solid is the transom? Nobody here wants to be the bearer of bad news, but that boat sounds like someone’s carriage that’s turned back into a pumpkin.

The boat is 19 years old and sounds like it's a 'one and only'. It's been for sale for a long time and has a top speed of 26 mph. Are they still prop testing after 19 years? What on Earth (or some other planet) is the owner thinking? When I've listed boats for sale, Ive always made sure they'd pass any normal water test in style.

Turn your back on this orphan, there's gotta be plenty of other nice boats on the market.

RR

A good friend of mine raced for formula in the early 2000’s. I’ll check with him if he remembers the setup.
also, in f1 and f2 classes I’m pretty sure straight bottom boats could have boxes, step bottoms did not.

Well I bought the boat. I’ve had it for about 3 weeks now. I’ve been prop testing. It went 73 mph with a 24P Bravo one hitting the rev limiter at 5600. Finally got the hull to let loose and air out with a 28P Bravo one, went 74 @ 5000-5100 rpm, but was very hard to get past the 30 mph, then once the hull got enough speed to start ‘working’ it took off. Working with BBlades now. Seems to be nothing wrong with the engine, the hull seems solid. It’s a very nice boat, but seems to need a low pitch prop with lots of bite to get past the30 mph mark to where the hull starts to lift and then the engine really takes of all of a sudden.

Congrats on buying the boat, sounded like you were not going to be easily dissuaded.
So what's different now? Just a smaller prop? Any idea why it wasn't set up with the 24" when you tested her? 73 is a pretty good speed I think, hope you get the best out of it with more testing and enjoy her for many seasons. 🙂

RR

I am continually learning about this boat. I spoke to the original owner who owned it for about 14-15 years. (The owner that had it when I bought it from the brokerage only had it 1 year and bought it when he was in the hospitol recovering from some sort of surgery... is the story I hear from Ed@ Big Thunder Marine)He said it would run low 80’s with the right prop but didn’t remember the Excact prop. He is the one that had the 575 horse Innovation Marine HP3 put in. When I bought the boat it had a BBlades labbed 28 Bravo One that wouldn’t get over 26mph on the sea trial. At that time the boat had 113 gallons of fuel in it and 3 guys and a driver who had never driven the boat. Anyways, I’ve got 4 props coming in the mail this week, gonna be prop testing this weekend. I don’t need to do low 80’s but an easy plane and mid-high 70’s would be nice.

Hopefully the weather is decent on Saturday for you to do some prop testing. We were going to come down this weekend, but it looks like a lot of rain in the forecast, so playing it by ear. I figured Ed would have some info on it. Based on what you are posting, I would probably install a 1" drive spacer. If the prop barely hooks up in calm water, then it will blow out easily in the rough.