Grate Seal - how important?

[viper15]

Silly uneducated question here. Can someone tell me how important it is to seal the intake / grate? I see quite a number of posts to this effect to help counteract cavitation on take off. But I can't gauge the impact or importance of it. I think I'm ignorant here and just want to understand it better.

My 2017 AR195 is all stock. I have experienced the major cavitation preventing me from even getting on plane. But that was due to some impeller damaged, which once repaired all was good. I do experience a little bit of cavitation on take off. But it's on when I go full throttle from a dead stop. It will maybe do a short whaaa thing about twice, that's it. A bit more when pulling a skier from a deep water start. Is this the sort of little cavitation that people chasing by sealing the intake, or going with the L13 cone?

Please help me understand ...

 

[Scottintexas]

do you have a noise/vibration or just feel like you're revving and not going anywhere?

chasing cavitation can be like chasing the magic bullet,
my impellers looked terrible but I had little to no performance issues, others though one small ding in the wrong place and performance suffers,

air intrusion can be the same,
what may look on the surface (I've never "sealed" my grates) as not good or missing as long as it's not sucking air into the impeller or disrupting the flow (like a Walmart bag would) it's not a problem,

check your tunnel for any loose ( I had silicone in my tunnel that looked good but when you pull on it, it would come away from the tunnel allowing air in) or missing silicone,

the faq has a couple of good threads about it,