Johnwhite84

I'm 26 with 2 houses, 2 kids, and laid off. When money is tight I get rather inventive. I may try for a little more space but I still want to be able to get the cap off easily.

Hydro Junkie

Let me guess, selling a house is out of the question
Don't feel bad, since I'm sort of strapped for cash as well. One of the reasons I'm building two Dumas Paks using one kit and modding the heck out of them

Johnwhite84

Ok i got to thinking. Should I place the battery pack just to the left of center to balance out any added weight from my right sponson and runner repair? Or keep it in the center?

I just mocked everything up and I WILL have to move the tank up just a bit more in order to fit the battery pack all the way on the deck. I am assuming you want everything as low as possible to keep the CG low. (nobody likes blowovers when it happens to them)

amax

Yes I would move it to the left, and you are correct the lower the weight the better. The reason I used the Sullivan tank was to eliminate the cap, they are often the cause of a pressure leak.

Hydro Junkie

I'd also move the pack to the left, but not to offset the repair. In many cases, the engine torque will lift the left sponson as you accelerate and at the higher speeds. Moving the pack left will "help" with preventing it, though it's not a cure

Johnwhite84

I tried putting my 5 cell hump pack in and didn't really like the layout so I removed the shrink wrap and pulled each cell out individually. Then resoldered the connections back in a different configuration that conformed to the space allowed. I'll post a few pics later tonight.

Johnwhite84

Here are a few of the battery pack. I made it in two sections. One section will be flat on the deck and the other section will be snug against the engine backplate. Hopefully converted to belt start soon.

I just took a few pictures from the airbrush work. For all you scale guys im sure you wont be interested but I think it turned out very good. Realistic flames to me look better then the stensiled fake ones. I will have larger more detailed pictures when I break out the camera. Those were taken with a phone camera and reduced in size.

res3567

Goodness! That is one AWESOME looking paint job......

toyotatruckin

looks great, your paint guy I hope used a good fuel proof clear over the nice work.Reason I say something is Ive seen lots of airbrush painters spray rattle can clear which is not good on a nitro boat

Johnwhite84

No no I only use urathane. The only rattle can I ever use is an etch coat primer for bare metal and sometimes a primer surfacer for small repair. It's laquer so it shrinks back real bad but works great for a quick spot repair. The airbrush work is actually water borne paint. I want to clear it tomorrow but it's going to be ass cold and all I have is medium activator. Might try to get the space heaters out to bring the temp up. I'll take some more pics after she is cleared.

toyotatruckin

Good deal, a guy in our club had a spt 40 he painted it with enamel paint, it looked good until he ran it a few times every drop of nitro that touched it left a nice memory lol, I later ended up with the boat and when I went to strip it off it was clogging my paper up bad so I tried some of the off the shelf stripper I had used the fiberglass safe gel before with no problems, the crap in a can I tried was not for fiberglass so I tried it on the cowl first, I left it on a little to long and the gel-coat popped like pop-rocks (seriously) the hull was spray and remove quick, it got the job done but boy that cowl was a royal pain to fix..

Johnwhite84

It can get pretty tricky with all the different technologies in paint products. I still get confused at times. Epoxy, acrylic, urathane, laquer , enamel, I can go on and on. Anywho, once the clear has cured what grit should insane the skids with to create less surface tension and more speed! I have read some people use very corse grit like 180 and some use rather fine grit like 600. 1 other question I know Adam would probably know fir sure, how many coats do you put on? Typically I like 3 but weight is an issue so would 1 coat work?

toyotatruckin

400-600 front to back not side to side on the running surfaces only, what I do on clear is if it looks good at 2 coats leave it be(more you do the greater chance for a mess-up) I tend to spray my clear a little heavier on the running surface if im going to be sanding the bottom, as an example your clear will build up on your sharp transom edge creating a little hook in the bottom, you would want to carefully remove that unwanted hook if your looking for all possible performance.

Johnwhite84

Thanks for the info. I did not even think about the added materiel on the transom edge.

I have personally never done this but do you think it will help the depth of the artwork if I clear it with 1 coat let it dry, 1000 grit the whole thing flat then clear it again. I know that's one way they do show cars but didn't know if it would work with only 1 coat-sand-1 coat. Probably just be A waste of time and more likely to run it especially in this cold weather.

amax

In cold weather especially,, your First Coat should be a Light\Dry Tack Coat, spray all the Hard to Get areas First, give it a couple minutes to start flashing then spray the big areas, If you spray the first coat Dry\Light let it flash for at least 15 min, then spray the second coat Wet for your slick finish. I wouldn't Sand the clear and Re Clear unless your adding more graphics, if you are adding graphics and you want it to Look Deeper then you need more material\Clear between the layers of paint, at least 2 coats of clear and no more than 4 depending on the Brand Paint your using. When you see Show Cars with the Real Deep Paint it's usually Lacquer Paint, which can be applied in many many layers, Urethane does Not do well when applied That Thick.

Don't put So Much work into the boat that all you want to do with it is make it a Shelf Queen

Johnwhite84

Shelf queen she will not be. Usually after the first little nick or scratch it's like donkey kong. You do have a point tho, I think I will just spray 2 coats and be done.

I really picked a bad time to crash my boat. By the time I get it all fixed it's going to be to damn cold to run it.

misshydro

I'd ran mine until the pond frozend.

Johnwhite84

how does water temp affect tuning? Im assuming you can lean her out a little bit more because the cold water will cool the engine faster but then wont you run into issues with the engine temps being TOO low to run right?

I personally never really tuned by temp but the majority of my tuning experience is with Monster Trucks. As Long as I could still see some smoke I leaned that Bia out untill I saw no more performance gain then backed off just a bit. never had any issues at all. Unfortunatly you cant see smoke on the boats so I tuned by sound and gps. (on a fully broke in engine.) Thats a whole other thread tho and I am sure there are TONS of them.

toyotatruckin

thats a good time to wreck it, you get to take more time getting things right when your not rushing things, do what amax just said and youll come out fine.

Hydro Junkie

On temps VS tune, the colder it gets, the harder it is to get an engine to run really well. With some engines, you actually need to restrict or remove the water cooling to the jacket as it OVERCOOLS the engine, affecting head temps and how the fuel ignites. Too cold of head and the fuel won't burn worth a hoot. Getting back to tuning, colder air is denser air. This means that you will most likely have to richen the needle to get the right air/fuel mix. Richening the needle has the effect of cooling the head as well, so it's a real balancing act that you need to work on to get the engine to run[X(]

amax

When the water gets Cold I run it through the Exhaust Cooler first, then The Head, that will keep it warm enough to get a Good Tune in the Cooler Air and Really Scream. I get the Best Performance from my engines around this time of year..

Hydro Junkie

Amax. you're in Florida, WHERE IT DOESN'T GET COLD[sm=tongue_smile.gif]

Johnwhite84

Hey Amax you mind posting up a picture with your exhaust cooler setup?

res3567

Talking sbout tuning.....earlier today we were runningon50% nitro....both boats were runnig fine. Then we ran out and had to use 30%. Did all of the usual....changed plugs....from med. cold to med., richen theHSN, leaned the HSN....then the clouds came in and the wind picked up...cooler temps....

Well....My SVran great....however....Flyboy's Vegas went from SUPER WILD, to mild. The Vegas has the ST engine which has a biggerwater jacketon the head as opposed to my SV running the stock OS with a smaller head jacket.

My SV kept on chugging.......We could not figure it out........ the Vegas did not want to scream anymore...and I know the fuel had something to do with it....richen, lean it out....to no avail....


The Vegas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgkhvETr2Fs

The SV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElWkcfl0Axg

siberianhusky

The colder and drier the air the more you need to richen it up. What did the plug coil look like? No distortion or pulling out of the coil?
I'd also try restricting the water cooling a bit at a time and see if that helps. The extra alcohol in the lower nitro fuel also has more of a cooling effect.
There are quite a few variables going on, nitro acts as an oxygenator, meaning it actually has some of it's own oxygen in it so you can run a richer needle setting with more nitro.
Interesting problems, temp being cooler means richer, lower nitro means a bit leaner, and could be not reaching operating temperature, Alcohol is also a cooler burning fuel, it doesn't have the btu's. It the 30% had more oil it it the oil also cools the engine. It doesn't burn and carries a lot of heat out the exhaust.
I'd first try less cooling, possibly a hotter plug and fiddle with the needle. A lot of changes at once to try and pin it down to one specific thing.
Last time I was out I had a bear of a time getting mine running right, changed fuel and cool temps on a boat that hadn't run very much and was still figuring out the prop, pipe and stuff.
Eventually I changed to the only hot plug I had, ended up richening it up and wrapping the air cooled head in tinfoil. Finally started to run right then the wind picked up and it got pretty choppy.
The only thing it looks like you didn't try is restricting the water, try that on the outlet side, lets the water heat up more if it's restricted on that side.
Was the 30% fresh fuel? Alcohol is hydroscopic- it absorbs moisture, that messes up old fuel. Every time you open the jug air replaces the removed fuel and the alcohol absorbs the moisture from the air in the jug.
A few things to think about but not much concrete info!
I also keep notes on each of my boats, I record the air temps, plugs used, pipe length, needle setting, prop, stinger/strut angle and depth, trim tabs etc.
Makes it easier to tune as things change as you can refer back in your notes and see what you did last time the conditions were similar.
Hope some of this helps! LOL
Cheers