18 R23 surf setup changes...what happened?

[Thistledoo]

I have a 2018 R21 and the 537 sucked IMO so not sure how you guys are getting a fully loaded R23 moving with the 537. I have the 400 raptor and my dealer says my boat doesn't need this update so I haven't pushed, but after reading all these issues I wont. mine seems to work pretty dam good for a baby hull on both sides on the wake. I switched to a 1615 prop and big diff!!

can you guys get on plane loaded with the 537? I sure couldn't....

[Bamer]

I have a 2018 R21 and the 537 sucked IMO so not sure how you guys are getting a fully loaded R23 moving with the 537. I have the 400 raptor and my dealer says my boat doesn't need this update so I haven't pushed, but after reading all these issues I wont. mine seems to work pretty dam good for a baby hull on both sides on the wake. I switched to a 1615 prop and big diff!!

can you guys get on plane loaded with the 537? I sure couldn't....

I was very surprised that the 537 pushed the weight based on all the reviews on this forum about the 537. The 2 things I had going for me was my altitude is only 700ft so the motor will put out more power versus higher altitudes. The second thing is that I was running with front ballast full and 320lbs of people in the bow and the with the center plate at 1-3 which keeps the bow down. When the bow is pitched up, it will be harder to get on plane and I will find that out this coming weekend when testing with Koolaids recommended settings.


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[JCP]

i think the earlier comment about the surf-side plate dragging when pitched over a certain angle could be a possible culprit. we surf a really deep lake (60'+), so depth ain't it. I'm at a loss as well. I've let dealer know and their setup guy is going to troubleshoot also.

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It should be easy to verify if a dragging plate is causing your problem. Disconnect the surf side actuator from the plate and tie the plate up high and out of the way.

[Bamer]

Hold off on the extra weight/lead. More weight doesn't always mean a bigger wave. Adding the weight now is tossing in an extra variable that doesn't help solve the wave issue.

Taps should be set around 4. Having it set at 1 to 2 is burying the nose of the boat.

With the plate changes you need to set surf at 7 for your starting point. 1-3 is only going to mess the wave up in most cases.

What ballast setup should I start with?


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[cnote]

ok guys & gals. went out this weekend for a few surf sessions to try and solve the surf setup issue we've had to start this year after the surf taps actuator adjustments. to start, I set up ballast placement exactly like last year. 900# aft, rear bags full, front bags 85/50 to surf side. (we did end up filing them a little more) and about 700# of people + rider. full gas tank.

surf 4, taps 4, 10.8 mph.

that put me running at ~11.5° of pitch, 6° roll.

and, well, not to be anti climatic, but the wave was back (mostly). it was tall, long, plenty of push at the back. it does still seem to wash out easily (swell or wind), esp on goofy, but seriously, blows my mind that setup is identical after the issues we had previously. I have no idea what was wrong with last two times we were out.

the regular side wave is freaking beautiful, long, firm (insert joke here), and with a perfect lip for launching airs. the goofy wave is a little messy (nit picking here), it appears the prop rotation is possible cause and the swim deck is dragging a little which creates a weird groove at the top of the wave.

I'll post pics/ video when ive got my gopro stuff loaded back home.



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[D&P Powell]

Great to hear! Keep us updated as many of us are rooting for ya.

[Bamer]

I have put off posting on this topic until I had more time to test different setups. Bottom line up front is I am able to get a very clean wave on the regular side with good length, push and adjustable via the center taps plate. I haven’t spent much time on the goofy wave but have found it a little harder to clean up(I’ll probably be starting a thread for help with goofy wave). I believe the 2 main issues I was fighting after my dealer corrected the top brackets for the surf plates was not enough weight and when I had enough weight the 537 could not push the weight and/or get a good wave without keeping the bow down which limits how much pitch I could achieve, which limits the wave potential of this hull.

With all that said, I confirmed the surf side plate is in contact with the water by “safely” getting onto the swim platform and looking at it. Although it is in contact(just barely), the plate is not in contact enough to have have significant affect on anything that I could determine. One of the reasons I thought the plate was in contact was the response feedback in the steering wheel under various scenarios. In general, under certain conditions I could be turning and the wheel would feel very smooth and all the sudden with more input, the wheel would get harder to turn and with more input the wheel could either get harder or easier to turn. I thought this feeling was caused by the surf plates effectively grabbing the water more or less causing the boat to try to Yaw. I completely dismissed that speculation yesterday after I ran the boat for the first time with a 2773 prop. It was like a whole new boat with respect to the steering wheel feedback I got while surfing, wakeboard, with/without ballast etc. I mean unreal difference. The steering was soooo smooth just like the demo boat I tested prior to purchase. The feedback in the steering wheel was so bad with the 537, I most likely would not have bought the R23 if the demo boat felt that way. I’m gonna pass this info onto my dealer and maybe write a letter to the factory. I don’t know Charlie Pigeon, but would think that if he drove my boat with that 537 on it and felt how my wheel felt he would probably eliminate the use of the 537 on at least the R23!!!! I would if I was him!!!! Am I the only one here that has had this experience? Why would the prop affect steering at speeds between 10-25mph?

Onto the 2773, it’s a 15x13 prop. Man, what a difference in performance with the new prop. Improved hole shot, speed holding, and much cleaner regular wave. I can pitch the boat up and with half to 70% throttle get the boat up to 11.4 in no time with 3000 water, 900lbs lead and 800lbs of people and pulling up a 225lbs guy with very little surf experience on a board rated for only 200lbs. I did not open it up all the way, but I got up to
28mph at 3700 and 37mph at 4750. I had more throttle left just wasn’t smooth enough.


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[D&P Powell]

I have the 537... as a weekend saver, tucked away in the corner of the garage!

[wired1236]

I too have been doing some testing and I’ll tell you it’s taken some time but I’m getting there. Here is a pic with 700 one of lead, 6 people in the boat with a few of them up front. Now Ill warn you this looks like it’s not that steep cause after I took it, I was surprised as how different it looked from my viewpoint on the drivers seat. It looked a little shorter a steeper than this looks.



Settings as shown here...





I did seem to be able to play around with both sets of taps to adjust the lip and steepness so that’s where I’m at now. Just being able to tune it was a huge step forward. I feel I’m at the point of being able to predict where the people and lead weights will effect my wave. Pretty stoked.


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[Bamer]

Here a couple pics of my wife dropping back and recovering. Once I added 900lbs of weight, I almost have to try to jack up the regular wave. It almost always looks clean, but the pocket and push can vary with different settings. I haven’t gotten close with the goofy wave yet, but also really haven’t worked on it much.







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[wired1236]

Nice. We mostly ride goofy so that’s where I spend most my time but yes, I find regular easier to tune in too. I think we are really close in producing no the same wave. Makes sense.


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[Bamer]

Nice. We mostly ride goofy so that’s where I spend most my time but yes, I find regular easier to tune in too. I think we are really close in producing no the same wave. Makes sense.


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Where was your lead for the pic above?


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[freeheel4life]

I have the 537... as a weekend saver, tucked away in the corner of the garage!

^^loving this. I will still maintain that the 537 is best used as a paper weight or wall art when it come to Raptor equipped boats. At least for guys not at sea level or who like pushing a lot of added lead/ballast.

[Germaine Marine]

The boat:
I assume my factory ballast is 3000lbs capacity. My dealer could not tell me what I have capacity wise between the bow and stern lockers And in-floor versus plug n play. The boat has in-floor bags in the rear lockers and in the bow. It also has plug n play L shaped bags that fill rear lockers and extend forward under the seats. I believe this configuration is 800lbs total in bow and 2200 lbs in rear to meet the specified 3000lbs on Tige’s website. I only have 200lbs of lead, but am getting 500lbs more. Should be enough as I will always have >600lbs of people on-board.

Raptor 400 w/acme 537, at 700ft elevation.

The lake:
17-19ft deep, 10-15mph winds, but sheltered by a bridge. Water was pretty calm except for occasional boat wakes.

The setup:
I had all bags 100% full 3000lbs. Ran pumps until water overflowed vent, (need a method to verify if I have air trapped in the bags). 100lbs lead in each rear locker all the way aft, 320lbs of people in bow(4 kiddos), 600-700lbs of people in main cabin area with most weight towards surf side and aft, >3/4 tank of gas. The swim platform was 8-10inches below the water line when not underway.

The plates:
All over the board in most all possible combinations. Best settings were center plate 1-2, surf plate 3-4. I could feel the boat Yaw and list when transitioning from left to right and vice verse. So I believe the plates are moving. What was very notable and another possible indication the non surf plate is hitting the water is that as I increased the center plate or the surf plate value (ie towards a larger value like 6-8) the boat really didn’t list more or pitch up much at all and started to washout. However, I could hear the engine working much harder to maintain speed which indicates to me the plates were moving down thus increasing drag of the boat. If.... and I am speculating, the non surf plate is starting to contact the water, this would make it harder to pitch up or list more and make more drag causing the engine to work harder.

Boat Speed:
Tried 10.4-11.6, best wave at 10.8-11.0

Getting up to speed:
I was impressed with the relative ease in which the raptor 400 got the boat up to speed with the acme537 and with so much weight. I only used just over half to 3/4 throttle while gettin up to speed. I believe this indicates that I am running with a relatively low pitch or that I am FOS about my ballast numbers some how. Do you know how I can verify my actual factory ballast setup?

As with any good design of experiment, I only changed 1 variable at a time, then observed results.


Thanks in advanced for all the help!!!! These forums only work when there are subject matter expects that share their knowledge and experience with newbies like myself!!!!!

THIS DUDE:
I have 20yrs experience with two bow rider IO’s but am new to the Vdrive world....



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Again sorry for being late. Lets make sure we know how the plates function. The higher the number the less plate deployed, the lower the number the more plate is deployed in the water.

Can I stress how important it is to check one variable at a time when out?. We now know scientifically where these boats need to run. Meaning we know they need to be at X amount of pitch, X amount of roll and displace generally X amount of water. While the settings due to hull design etc may yield different ideal numbers the principal in applying the information is the same for every boat. Know what the numbers need to be and you will get the same wave every single time out.

The checklist when I go out is the following.

-assess people
-fill ballast according to what the boat needs, visually make sure ballast is correct vs looking at the screen
-check pitch and roll. 2 degrees bow high and 2 degrees of lean toward the surf side at rest if mind serves me right
-Set plate position
-Set speed

No adjustments to plate while underway.... I cant harp on this enough. While you can get lucky some of the time you wont ever have consistency doing this. Before you bash Tige or the system think about how it operates and how many variables you introduce when you make movements underway. The electronic actuators previous to 2020 run and operate off of time based movements. Got a lower battery? Running a ton of weight? Running a ton of electrical components? Harder on the throttle? all of these variables affect how fast and at what position the actuators final destination resides. My rule of thumb is always to set the plate at 1 and then back it off from there until that disturbance line we all know so well starts to work its way back into the picture. The reason I start at 1 is because the plate is deployed at 9mph and if set to 1 (Fully deployed) has a certain amount of overun built into the system to negate most if not all of the variables I listed above. Taking the plate out of the water isnt affected by the items I mentioned above. Once set, leaving it at the number will get you damn near close every time. Doing it in this order nets you the correct setup early on in the day. If you start trying to dance the plate around at speed you could easily tweak the boat into running like complete Dog S***.

The actuator function isnt unique to tige. I was just in a 2018 Ri237 today that ran the exact same way (we took it on trade )

The way the actuators perform are finicky until you understand the principals behind how they run. This finicky nature is exactly what led to the changes for 2020. The new parkers have built in sensors. Click a position and regardless of speed, load etc switching back and forth side to side is exactly the same every time.

I hope this helps a little. Understand the science and your world will change in regard to boat setup.

[Germaine Marine]

I too have been doing some testing and I’ll tell you it’s taken some time but I’m getting there. Here is a pic with 700 one of lead, 6 people in the boat with a few of them up front. Now Ill warn you this looks like it’s not that steep cause after I took it, I was surprised as how different it looked from my viewpoint on the drivers seat. It looked a little shorter a steeper than this looks.



Settings as shown here...





I did seem to be able to play around with both sets of taps to adjust the lip and steepness so that’s where I’m at now. Just being able to tune it was a huge step forward. I feel I’m at the point of being able to predict where the people and lead weights will effect my wave. Pretty stoked.


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A quick thought. Taps 3 and nearly all surf systems want weight and lots of it. Rear weight being the most important. Why have you bled off weight in the most important area? *Rear*?

If you are doing it to induce some lean then I challenge you to use the bow bags to give you that. You have less then full weight in the rear, and about 60% of the weight in the nose.

Try running 100 percent in both rear and then filling the bow accordingly to get you to the lean you need.

I think running a system boat shy of rear weight is counter productive.