The initial question was whether the 260's have hook intentionally built in, which they should not. Hook is a gradual rounding. But the intial post was probably refering to the built in Wedge on some (or all perhaps) of these boats. Assuming the intial post was interested in all types of stern lifting hull designs, we have been debating whether all of them have this or not.

Since no one has yet to post pics of a newer 260 hull from the outer strakes to the chines, we are at an impass and have no conclusions

It would be real interesting to see and hear of someone without the wedges. And more so to ride in one without to really see what the difference is . Or for that matter if someone else has already done so.

bcarpman, any idea on cost for the removal of the wedges? Also any idea as of the hull thickness and the make up of the hull bottom in that area as to how much material is there?
I'm wondering if the wedges are all glass or if they are balsa?

Same here. I was using the wrong terminology. In any event, every 260 I have looked at, regardless of year, had the wedge between the chine and the outermost strake. The 290's I have looked at also have it.

They are on the hull to minimize porpoising.

They are in the mold so every hull out of that mold has them unless they were specifically ground off after the boat was removed from the mold.

It is possible to grind them off but it is not worth it.

Marc

Marc, So are you aware of any hulls making it out of the factory without them?? And by the way what is the correct verbiage for these so called wedges?

We always referred to them as shingles.

As a rule no customer or dealer boats left the factory with them ground off.

I think there may have been an employee boat or two that had been modified but I can't say for sure.

If you grind them off they don't improve your speed, they just allow the hull to porpoise so you end up dropping your tab just a bit to eliminate the porpoise.

Nothing gained except the possibility of blisters due to gel work below the waterline.

Good to know. What the heck you guys a bunch of ex-roofers??:D

No roofers involved...

I don't know where the term came from but when we would add them to a hull in testing it looked like a wood shingle (like a cedar roof shingle).

The guy that used to work at the Powerquest factory who contacted me after a long ago similar thread (and now does hull work on his own), said he could do the work along with a full hull blueprinting for $5K. I was not nor am interested in putting that kind of money into this boat. However, since I consider this boat to be my starter boat and mainly an experiment to keep me from making mistakes on future boats, I'm willing to experiment myself.

The wedges are not all fiberglass, however the top layer above the core is flat with the hull, so I will have to cut out the bottom layer of fiberglass completely, but by using proper techniques (I've done lots of high performance composite work), along with using epoxy and kevlar for the layup, I feel the resulting work will be plenty strong.

The guy I talked to was an ex powerquest employee who was not a board member, but reached me through a relative who is a member of the board. For some reason I cannot find his contact info anymore which is very unusual for me, and his PM's were long deleted off the system. Do you have any idea who this would have been, and why he would have completely different info? From his voice on the phone, he sounded like an older gentleman and certainly seemed to know his stuff.

An 1/8 inch hook in the bottom of any other boat will kill top speed. I can't see how a 3/4 inch wedge would do nothing? Also, if they are doing anything to prevent porpoising, then by that fact alone, they must be in the water and exerting stern lift. It just can't work any other way.

One thing we may be forgetting: If you have experience with stock 260's with 330hp, and removal of the wedges made no difference at the 54mph top speed of that stock boat, that fact does not mean it would have no effect on the top speed of a 600hp boat.

When I first started experimenting with this boat, I ran the stock figures through hull constant calculations and came up with a hull constant of 224 which seems right for a conventional v-hull designed for comfort not top speed. As I have progressively stepped up in HP, the calculated hull constant keeps dropping (had fallen to 207 before the 2in shorty drive). This is something that should not happen unless the hull is doing something really funky as speed increases (hull constant by definition should be a constant).

My theory is that if the factory had been building 257's with HP500's they would have seen a difference with the wedges removed.

Again, I guess we'll see this spring. I'm not one to try to hide my mistakes, so I will report back.