f16man

It won't be very fast and handling will suffer with the weight of that wacker zen.

piper_chuck

My Feedback: (12)

Yup, it's a waste of a perfectly good kit and lots of time. A much better choice would have been to start with a kit that was designed for the engine, such as the Whiplash, and go from there. Oh well, some people just have to go their own way despite overwhelming evidence that it's a bad idea.

misshydro

Ok guys the proboats are 1/8 scale with zen motors and they run!! Your talking about weight,a bigger wood hydro like 1/6 would be heavyer then 1/8 and the boat would be slower too.A 1/8 would be lighter then 1/6. Like I said before I can make the hump in the cowl like pro did with theres and notch out the top hull deck like pro too.Plus I can get a mod zen to,to compansate the heavyer weight differents. I know fiber glass is lighter then wood. I could use that miller as a plug too? Oh I seen worse hack jobs that run fast too.[>:]

piper_chuck

My Feedback: (12)

Have you had a chance to run, or even see running, any one of the several gas sport hydros (Whiplash, PI, Insane, etc)? Have you been able to compare their performance to that of the proboat 1/8 hydros? Sure the Pro Boats run, and are fine for what they are, but there is a difference.

As far as weight goes, it'll be interesting to compare the weight of my gas whiplash hull to that of a typical glass 1/8 scale hull when it arrives. The Whip hull is anything but heavy. I don't think your generalization about glass hulls being lighter is always true. A well built wood hull can be quite light.

Also keep in mind that the Pro Boat is designed for the extra weight and size of the gas engine. The Dumas kits are designed for a considerably lighter nitro engine. Stuff all that extra weight in there and one or more aspects of performance will suffer.

Hydro Junkie

Okay Misshydro you are comparing apples, oranges and bananas again.
First off, I don't care what Pro Boat calls their boats, THEY ARE NOT SCALE , they are a gas Sport Hydro and nothing more
A scale boat is required to look like the real thing, which the Pro Boat's don't. They are distorted to get the gas engine to fit
Let me show you what can be done with a 1/6th scale by a builder that is willing to take the time to do it right Granted, it's slower than a Pro Boat piece of crap since it has a Zen 230, but at the same time, it is now on display at the Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum, unlike a Pro Boat. The smaller version behind the big boat is a 50+ MPH 1/10th scale electric that is 3' long, as compared to the big boat's 5' and was built by the same person. And just for the record, there is more to R/C boating than going fast. A couple of boats doing 35 on the water are just as exciting as one doing 60, but a pair of nice scale looking boats doing 35 will attract a lot more attension and keep it longer than a hack job doing 60. Just something to think about

toyotatruckin

Yep run good for a nice relaxing family trip to the lake!
Here look at it this way, would you put a .67 engine in a sport hydro hull made for gas? I would hope not, so why try and put a gas engine in a hull made for nitro?
Nice shovel pics there HJ!

f16man

Doesn't the proboat do 35 mph out of the box? with a pumped up zen it may do 50 maybe, the 1/8 scale boats are not competitive unless they run in the mid 60's. Ihave seen some really fast gassers but the price of the full blown mod engine is very pricey, and they are almost as finicy to get on pipe as a nitro.

toyotatruckin

There was a proboat hydro at our club that had a modified 260 -pipe- etc. and it was faster BUT there came problems with the speed, you had to use a smaller prop than needed because running a prop that it SHOULD run the hull couldnt take, it would blow over and was very unstable even with a ton of extra weight added to the front, So whats the point in the mod engine and good pipe when you loose it all at the prop? NONE.. and the speed was still not close to a real sport hydro.... A good mod zen and pipe will set you back $725 and up, so take the 1000$ for the RTR proboat add 725$ for good pipe and engine and that alone puts the rtr at 1725$ add extras and tax your looking at right around 2000$ for a boat that wont keep up!

f16man

YUP, for $2000.00 you can build a very scale and fast 1/8 hydro,but you better be a confident driver, I have seen a lot of nice hardware get smashed up due to driver/pilot not staying ahead of their projectile.