BigSilverCat

The radar is actually really big, that's a 200 lb black panther..... or maybe not he just thinks he is.

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buck35

I had an 8 to 12 lb cat and two mastiffs, there was no doubt who ruled the roost, lol !

plumbers crack

Thats a nice piece wish they used them for my OL windshield

BigSilverCat

This is what they look like installed on a boat

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faceaz

Awesome... Just got turned onto this, took awhile to make it through .

Couple questions:

- I noticed in the first dyno post when the exhaust coating got hot, you could see the hot air getting sucked into the intake. I know the headers will eventually have water & be cooler, but would running an extension off the inlet to supply cooler air make a noticeable HP gain?

- Knowing fatigue is part of any endurance run. Do you plan to make the steering wheel mobile with the seat suspension? With 8" of seat travel, I imagine fatigue would be cut down if the steering moved with the seat. Some sort of bracket off the seat base to an extended steering shaft / wheel via u-joint?

Thanks for taking the time to post your progress, so impressive!

BigSilverCat

For the top HP you could possibly get, yes a cold air intake tube could help a little. But in normal instances it would not gain any noticeable power. You can see the smoke going into the turbo but there is so much air going in that you don't see to counter act the heat off the pipe that it would not actually raise the air temp coming out of the turbo 1 degree. And as you mentioned they will end up water jacketed so it would really not affect anything. The biggest difference we could make would be a big bell shape in front of the turbo to smooth the air flow going into it. We do not want a cold air intake going up to a "blower" scoop to try to keep from getting salt water into the engine.

We had originally tried to design a tube that bolted to the bottom of the seat and ran in front of you that would hold the steering wheel and helm. But then the hoses would have to move up and down with it and it was a lot of weight. I never actually thought about having the helm mounted in the dash normal then a "drive shaft" to the steering wheel mounted to the seat. That would solve the hose and helm weight problem if you could get enough slide and angle in the mechanism for the short length between dash and seat vs the travel of the seat. The reason we are just mounting the steering wheel solid to dash is it will have a more solid feel then having to have a huge bracket to not flex if it was mounted to the seat. With having suspension seats you loose a lot of the "seat of the pants" feel to what the boat is doing and by having the steering wheel mounted solid to the dash it lets you know more of what the boat is doing.

We will have autopilot on the boat so in rough water when were not going real fast you will not have to hold onto the steering wheel either. The seats have 8" travel but that is kind of worst case. normally they will only move a little bit that will be around the same amount you would move up and down in the foam of a normal seat.

BigSilverCat

Saturday night I went to the West Michigan Offshore clubs party ( https://westmichiganoffshore.squarespace.com/41616 ) and met a bunch of nice people. A few of them said they wanted to come by and see the new Skater I'm building over here in Douglas MI. A couple of the guys text me on Sunday and I said I was at Skater working on it so they came over. Then they spent there Sunday afternoon helping me modify my suspension seats for the boat. It was a time consuming process when it's only one person doing the work but by them helping it only took a couple hours. Thanks again for the help.

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NASCAT

If the steering column were mounted / supported by the seat structure instead of thru the dash it would move up & down w/ the seat so you'd always be in the same seating position in relation to the wheel..
A 6 way harness w/ sub straps would be required in order to keep you from sliding forward into it.

The knee knocker I posted way back would be a way to pad it & keep your legs from banging against it.

joshemmick

You're welcome, it was fun to help out. Very impressive boat!

BigSilverCat

We kept the window height as high as possible all the way to the back because I have suspension seats for the back seat people and I wanted to keep them out of the wind.

The storage box is fiberglassed down, it acts as the bulkhead mount for the front seats. The cockpit is a few inches longer then normal because of having the box in the middle and at the front of cockpit the windshield is normal width but then the cockpit widens out to around 8" wider then normal towards the back so I would have room to put the steps between the middle seats. Normally you could step in the seats to get out of the cockpit but the suspension seats drop when you step into them so I put steps down the middle.