Newbie with ballast questions/issues....

[1sicktige]

Hey guys, so as some of u may know I am new here first tige and first vdrive. Took the boat out to the lake today to start to become familiar with my new boat (2013 z1). Came across a couple issues that I hope all you experts can help me out with a bit.


1.) tige touch ballast water level inaccurate. Now idk if these ballast have a sensor in them or what, but my front ballast only read at 25% even when full on the screen, and the rears read about 75% even when full. Same with when they r filling up. They start at 25% in from and stay there. And rear starts at 75% and stays there. Is this normal? Way to calibrate this? Or is this a warranty issue I should let my dealer know?

2.) when I filled up both my front ballast full, and both rear ballast full and started to drive the bow of the boat came up so high you couldn't see infront of u, even standing up! Clearly I'm doing something wrong? I know on my test drive with the boat my dealer filled up all ballast to show us the wake the boat makes and I don't recall it ever doing this. What's the truck to these ballast?

All help/info/advice will be much appreciated, this boat has been a real learning experience especially coming from a basic I/O for 15 years. Thanks in advance!

[chpthril]

1) you can re calibrate the timers. Its in the TT menu somewhere.

2) What was your TAPS setting? What ballast option does the boat have? With the surf level you have about 1200 aft and only 400 bow. If full, then what you experienced would be predictable and normal. For wake-boarding, I would want a 50/50 weight split at least, but most seem to like a 60/40 front/rear split, better. For surfing, I would not run more the 50% on the off side aft.

[1sicktige]

Tried all different taps setting, nothing really helped. What would be the right taps to be on? I do have the surf ballast in my boat. So what your saying is I should be filling up my tanks full? Seems like everyone keeps trying to get bigger ballast in there boat but if you can't even fill them all the way up what's the point? Appreciate the help man, so your saying for wakeboard between a 50/50 and 60/40 and for Wakesurfing just fill the rear about 50% no front?

[chpthril]

How fast where you going and what were you trying to do? There is no real correct TAPS setting, its about whats the ideal setting for a giving water sports, amount of ballast, amount of people, boat speed, rider, etc etc etc. The TAPS is just a trim/attitude plate. Down will raise the stern and bring down the bow. What "number" TAPS setting, depends.

To a point, how much ballast is irrelevant. Its about the right amount of ballast in the right place for the right water sport......based on all the conditions listed above. 3K to 4K lbs of ballast for surfing or boarding is not out of the norm, but you got know where to put how much in order to get the wave/wake dialed. Simply putting 1200 in the aft ballast and going for a cruise, would result in the side effect your experienced.

for Wakesurfing just fill the rear about 50% no front?

What I said was I would not suggest running more the half full in the rear ballast tank/side on the side OPPOSITE of the side your are surfing on. If you have the VX, you are going to want more ballast then the stock 350 lb sacs hold. Bow ballast is not always a must, but has is benefits. Some hulls do prefer bow ballast though. In those, most find that when more is added to the aft surf side, more needs to be added to the bow. Maybe not the same amount or even the same percentage, but some none the less.

[Ewok]

To take Chpthrills comments a step further.

There are 3 levels of ballast from Tige, Basic, Surf and Pro. The basic system has 2 hard tanks (250#s each) under the floor of the engine side lockers and a U shaped ballast bag (400#) under the bow seats. Surf ballast adds 350# bags on top of the hard tanks in the engine locker areas and the bow is unchanged. The Pro ballast option removes the 400# U shaped sac in the bow and replaces it with two separate 400# bags under the port and starboard bow seats.

The rear Surf ballast is not meant to be filled on both sides at the same time. If you filled both surf sacs the rear would be much heavier than the bow and the boat might not ever be able to get on plane. In order to get a good surf wave you want the boat to lean to the side you plan to surf on, and drive the boat in a straight line. So the basic way to start getting a good surf wave is to fill the rear ballast on one side only, the side you wish to surf on. Most people are regular foot when standing on a surfboard, so the port side is filled for regular foot riders. If you are goofy foot (right foot forward) then the starboard side is easiest to surf on and you would fill the starboard side. I would also fill the bow U shaped sac for surfing either side, but that's my RZ2, maybe someone with a Z1 would chime in for their setup.

If you have the pro ballast, then you would fill the rear surf side and the bow ballast on the surf side as well.

If you want to wakeboard, then I would start out by filling the bow sac full and the rear at 50%. This is a good starting point with 60% rear, 40% front of the ballast to run with.

After all the talk about ballast and where to set it, then we have to understand how TAPS works and how to make it work for you. Your dealer probably told you that TAPS 0 is the smallest wave and TAPS 8 is the biggest wave, and that is true to a degree, but TAPS does much more than make the waves bigger or smaller. If you are running lots of weight the boat will not get on plane with a high TAPS setting, and here is why. The TAPS plate is nothing more than a single Bennet trim tab in the center of the stern. The magic of the TAPS system lies in the shape of the Convex-V hull. The easiest way to explain it is that the bottom of the boat has a continuous rocker, it's shaped like a spoon. This shape makes it very difficult to get on plane without some help from the TAPS plate. The TAPS plate in the fully up position, setting 8, is retracted and out of the flow of water coming from the running surface. When the TAPS plate is set to 0, its at the lowest setting, and extending down into the flow of water coming off the bottom of the hull. This downward angle helps push the back of the boat up, and conversely pushes the bow down, and this helps the boat get on plane.

If you have the boat empty and want to go for a cruise, the way to drive the boat efficiently is to set TAPS at 0, and accelerate on plane and find your cruising speed. When your cruise speed is found, use small .5 second bursts of the TAPS switch up to raise the bow, just like an I/O with stern drive trim. Continue to slowly trim the bow up until it starts to bounce up and down, or porpoise. When it starts to porpoise use those same short bursts of the TAPS switch down until the bow stabilizes, and that is your most efficient cruising attitude. If the water is rough your going to need to keep the bow lower. I usually cruise around at TAPS 1-2. On a really calm day I can cruise at TAPS 3-4.

The same basic procedure exists for towing a rider either surfing or wake boarding. Set TAPS at 0, get on plane, set the speed with cruise control and then adjust TAPS in slight bursts to get the wave height and shape you want. If you set the TAPS too high the wave will get washed out and the bow will porpoise. Generally, the more weight you run in the boat, the lower the MAX TAPS setting will be before you wash out the wave. For example, with an empty boat, wake boarding at 21 mph, I can get a clean wave at TAPS 7, but if I run some ballast, I will get a clean wave at TAPS 4-5. Surf waves have a similar reaction to TAPS. for a set speed, lets say 11 mph, the wave is bigger at TAPS 5 than it is at TAPS 0, but at TAPS 6-8 it starts to curl early and makes the surf pocket shorter. In order to keep the surf pocket longer you need to speed up a little or lower the TAPS. So a lower TAPS setting helps lengthen the surf pocket but knocks down the height of the wave, and you need to play with the various speed and TAPS settings to find the right balance for you.

Sorry for the dissertation, but it's an often mis-uderstood system and gets blamed for operator error, which is just a lack of understanding of how the systems work together.

[chpthril]

Excellent info Ewok.

[1sicktige]

Chpthril and Ewok,

Thank you both so much!!! I couldn't of asked for more info. Look forward to trying this all put next time I hit the water. Thanks again!!!

[Z1Fan]

hello

good write up Ewok, I have a 2013 Z1 , with a 343hp, NO VX ,and i do have a surf Ballast setup, but somewhere in 2013 the surf ballast setup included 2 bags up front, as for the timers they are a pain in the ***, for lack of a better word to setup (but a fairly calm day and a stopwatch can help you calibrate them, but beware if you interrupt the power such as going from accessory to start, all the timers reset), , you know the ballast is full when water comes out of the vent. For wakeboarding, the Z1 will throw a robust wake back there just by using the TAPS, and you really don't need any ballast (unless your a pro). For waksurfing the Z1 is a bit of a challenge to set up, for normal side, fill both front and rear sacks full and rear opposite side around half to get a list of around 10 degrees (use a iphone or android app with a level) taps at between 3 and 4 speed 9.5 to 10.5 mph , and you should have a pretty good surf wake with not alot of push which is good for lighter teens and adults, but if your heavier as i am, your gonna need more weight period or a much bigger board, (get some bigger freinds etc. . as for the goofy side, i have never been able to dial in that side what-so-ever, even after putting on 80 hours on my boat last year... so that's why i am stoked that the endless wave tour is coming up to British columbia this year in august...hopefully will get some ideas as to what i can do with my boat to make it even better...if you need any other help just ask !!!

[JohnnieMo]

I just want to add something that may not be obvious.

There is no sensor in the ballast tanks or bags to measure how full they are. It is merely time based. So the Tigé touch has to be calibrated such that the timer basically equals a full bag. As Z1fan said, you know it's full when water comes out the side of your boat in proximity to the bag.

So if you calibrate a full bag to take 5 minutes, for example, you calibrate the Tigé touch to equate 100% to 5 minutes of pumping. Therefore at 2:30 minutes it reads 50% even though it has no idea.

In your case the Tigé touch likely thinks the bags are 25% full when in fact they are stuffed.