Holy Dead Forum Batman!!!!
 

Hey guys!

This place needs some life. It seems to be everyone selling lately. How is everyone doing? Winter plans, holiday vacations, performance upgrades?

This winter my wife and I are trying to whittle down some debt since I am retiring from the Army soon. My son is growing like a weed. He is 15lbs now at 4 months. Smiling, cooing, pooping and eating :) It is what life is all about. My winter plans are essentially just maintenance. My sundeck decided it was too big for it's britches and split the seam for the back support. I will be taking the sundeck off soon (as soon as I get all the holiday decorations out of my garage). I am going to powdercoat the wheels since the chrome has seen better days, and I think gloss black wheels will look nice. And I will be cutting and reconfiguring the back of the trailer. It is WAY too low for my area. scrapes on everything. gonna shave about 2" and redo the lights. Thank goodness for DIY handiness. I would love to supercharge, but its not in the cards right now. I will just enjoy the fairly fast, reliable 500EFI.

Anyhow, enough about me. Saw quite a few Nordics for sale this year. Kinda sad. I hope all your sales go well, and I hope you are at least staying on the water. Have a Merry Christmas everyone!

~The Gadsby Family

Hey Jay. Thanks for breaking the forum silence here. You've got some cool stuff happening. Good luck with all of it. One unsolicited piece of advice...on your trailer,,.if you'd like to save yourself the steel shaving DIY; Perhaps the #1best thing I ever did after season 1 with my Heat, after a couple of stressful teeth-grinding encounters with a steep driveway...was to have installed (welded) two steel rollers on the furthest rear/lower trailer cross member. I took it to a trailer company with a great rep, and for about $150 bucks (as I recall), and one hour of work, problem solved. I haven't worried about it since, and I can't count how many times I've just slow-rolled my way over steep angle encounters, no worse for the wear. No problem.

So stuff going on around the I2D household; My youngest daughter finishing her senior year in HS, and headed to college in the Fall (early accepted to OU). Boomer Sooner. My wife and I decided to start our downsizing process, so have our house here on Travis for sale, and are closing on a much (repeat MUCH) smaller home just down the street (love our neighborhood) this coming Friday. Been fishing like a fool, probably averaging 2-3x per week, and loving every minute of it. Skills are getting better, but I have a long way to go (deep water bass fishing is turning out to be a very difficult thing for me...much like using a driver off tee. Just can't quite seem to get it together. Going through another bout of considering selling the Heat, since she has been sitting way too much (bass boat getting most of the love). I go back and forth on this, since I can't imagine life without her, and leaving her up at LOTO full-time, with me down here in Austin far away -- makes me sad. Maybe I just need to change her slip location, since I walk by her every time I walk to the bass boat.

OK, so there's TMI for my Nordic brothers for this Wednesday morning. Hope everyone is doing well. Have a great holiday season everyone.

Dave.

No black wheels! No matter how elaborate they might look at a stop they all look like stamped steel wheels with the hubcaps gone going down the road....

I am dying to get back out on the water. I need to move to a warmer climate. We have temps in the single digits now so looking for spring. We love our Rage and so glad we took the leap last spring. The Nordics get so much attention and handle so good it is a ton of fun. I plan to figure out a couple things over the winter. First I would like to make some storage in the mid cabin seats as you need all you can get. I want to add some LEDs in the interior and would like to add some to the transom but worry on the best way (drilling makes me scared). I have dual batteries but they seem to drain quick with the radio (3 amps, 3 subs) so I want to check them but may add a third battery or something. The big project would be finishing the camper enclosure. We do upholstery and I started an enclosure that attached to the bimini that allowed us to overnight.

The rollers are a great idea send some pics if you can.

no black wheels? That's crazy talk.

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f1...psfece50cf.jpg

I am the proud new owner of an 07' Rage with a 500 EFI. totally different animal then the BAJA had it out 6 times in a month put 7 hours on it already. Now its not breaking the 70's anymore so its sitting in the yard watching the kids play!

Welcome to the Nordic Navy! Why is she not breaking 70??

Its freeeezen cold in Utah. Skiing is getting better but its hard to keep the toes warm when it's 4 degrees + wind chill. Still have the 09 rage with the 525 up for sale, but not trying to hard to let it go. I hope it warms up down south so I can make an early trip to Havasu.:)

Are those black wheels or are they just covered with brake dust, because they don't look like hubcaps to me?

Hello Everyone, I haven't been on OSO for a while, just off the water since October, and working too much. The boat is running great, but I've broken 2 XRs this season, and I gotta tell you this stuff is starting to get old $$$.....
The most "excitement" we've had here in the last month is our storage yard where several of my friends and I keep our boats caught on fire a few weeks back. Fortunately, it didn't get to any of our boats, so we dodged that bullet.
Marry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!
Steve

Sorry to here about your bad luck. What broke in your XR drives, were they new XR's or were they rebuilt by someone? I have been thinking about pulling my back cover to take a look at my upper gear set to see if there is any pitting, it has 90 hours on it.

They were rebuilt by the same person who has been keeping us on the water for years. They just weren't designed to take the horsepower and torque that it's easy make now. It isn't EBM's fault. There is a reason Mercury Racing doesn't put them on anything over the 600s. We've tried every trick we know (cryogenics/special oils and additives/blueprinting/extra HD bearings/high flow drive showers/etc.) The only suggestion I have is go easy on them, use the best oil your builder recommends, have a functional drive shower (most aren't), or buy a SCX IMCO. Change the oil frequently and keep a close eye on drain magnets. It also doesn't hurt to have a good shop or drive technician remove and inspect your drive, whatever it is, in the offseason. I used to say "I would rather pay $500 in January than $3000 in May"......
Best Regards,
Steve

Steve, any pics of your drive? I think I've seen one, you have AN fittings set up on a custom shower cap it looks like? Where do you pick up water for the shower?

Curious, thanks....

Like most people running Imco SC lowers, my water pressure is very high. The first time I tested with it, I got water in a cylinder.
Now I am taking water off the motor on the back of the intake, a Merc 30PSI blowoff and my drive shower, in addition to all the stock dumps.
I have a tee fitting with an adjustable pressure relief valve right after the WP outlet. It is set to about 10PSI and kicks in at plane off. It goes through the transom with a bulkhead fitting into a braided line a 90o AN (good eyes) and a stock IMCO cap.
If you think about it, the rest of the cooling system is linear to the engines RPM and heat buildup. The more RPMs you turn the more the water pressure builds inside the engine and it's various coolers. Unfortunately with most drive showers, they get less water as the boat rises out of the water at higher speeds, feeding the drive shower intakes less and less. So you get less cooling the faster you go.
You've probably seen some the old helicopter shots from the transom in Hot Boat and Powerboat. In most of those pics, there is no water coming out of the drive shower ar WOT. At the least, my setup is also linear with engine RPM and boat speed. Obviously it isn't perferct because I'm still blowing drives, but it's the best thing I've seen so far. Some west coast guys (?) have a pretty cool oil pump and inboard water cooler system. I have never seen one run by anyone here.

Thanks Steve, sounds like cool set up. I don't have the helicopter budget, so the go-pro on a stick had to work. Up to about 50 I have tons of water, I've made a few adjustments. Above that who knows, it's tough to see the video at WOT there is exhaust water spraying everywhere... Plus I don't want to be hanging off the back any faster than that!

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f1...ps88957046.jpg

Great picture. I am going to mount my Go Pro under the swim plaform next summer for a simlar view.
I don't know if there is amything there to be leared from it other than the flow, or lack thereof, from the drive shower,
But there might be, like flow off the tabs and drive, etc.
Oh yeah, I also mounted the 30PSI Merc water dump line under the swim platform so it sprays on the drive too, when
it blows off. I figured every bit of cooling I can get would help. I even thought about plumbing a second braided line from the
dump to the drive shower cap.