Just a small piece of advice. From my experience. Before you go and spend sick money on Hydraulic and any other power or handling upgrades, You may consider a bigger faster boat. A full hydraulic system can cost as much as 5k. and race tabs (K-planes) another 3k. Bennet tabs dont work well at speeds of 70 or better.

Just my .02

I understand your not wanting to spring for hyd steering,your boat is a accident waiting to happen without it but thats your choice! I built new stainless trim tabs to replace part of my bennets (i'm cheap sometimes) and it also helped,Smitty

Hey Artic, can you email me that picture. I'm not a paying member yet. [email protected]

In all the chinewalking demon boats I've had, a shorter drive has HELPED chinewalking. Keep in mind, that you still gotta lift the bow, and a shorty won't lift as well. If you don't need a lot of trim to get her aired out, then a shorty may work better than you'd think.

But don't even THINK about running a 80mph chinewalking boat with stock steering. You'll never have the solid link between the steering wheel and the drive that you need.

Before spending any money, you may want to remove the power steering and hook the Morse cable directly to the drive tiller. This will give you a more solid connection. It'll kind of suck cause you'll lose the power steering but it will be safer. It will also make your arms bigger.

well I measured how far bellow the stern of the boat the centerline on the prop shaft is: 8 1/2 inches. Does that seem like a lot? Anyway lifting the bow is not a problem with this boat. I am going to put a drew marine stabilizer on the boat also.

8 1/2"....That is deep. but, thats the way pleasure boats are set up. Non Stepped Race boats are usually around 3 to 4 inches below the bottom of the boat. If you put a 2" shorty on you may see some increase in speed and handling.

76 MPH with a 21 pitch prop? How many RPMs are you turning?

I take it you mean reduced the chinewalk ?



I think he is referring to Speedo speed @76 not GPS.

yes. In outboards, jacking the motor higher on the transom usually REDUCES tendency to chinewalk.

Steering torque goes thru the roof, and you'll grow a gorilla arm, but chinewalking reduces and speed goes up.

The motor is turning about 5400 RPM and yes this is speedo indicated. I don't have a GPS redily at my disposal.

Yes I mean to reduce the chine walk. So if my drive is currently at 8.5 inches and the Alpha SS drive will cut 3 inches, that gives me 5.5 inches. I was pretty wowed when I saw the cavitation was nearly even with the bottom of the transom. Will there be an adverse effect having the top side of the prop blade spinning slightly above the stern. Or is this going to allow me to run a lager pitch prop due to the slippage?