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Looking at the break-in procedure this morning for the Raptor engine and is is going to suck compared to the Yamaha!! The break-in for the Yamaha was like an hour or two but the Raptor is like 10 hours and zero filling of ballast!! Gonna have to stretch that out in 2-3 days on some of the bigger lakes for sure.
Haha! The break in period requires some patience but you can get through it in two days. The good news is that these engines make the boats nice for sliding through the water at 7-9 mph for that first hour. After that, at least you can run around on plane and do some cruising at up to 3K rpm. We pulled wakeboarders with no ballast once we got to the point that we could go up to 4K rpm - never really need more rpm than that for pulling up a boarder and the nature of wakeboarding & falling virtually guarantees that you'll be varying rpm pretty regularly.
Asked people to post their Max waves on the Supra and Moomba Owners group on FB. LOVE these two immediate shots below!!
Stock ballast with 600 lbs of lead in the bow...
I love to see the differences in the wave shape. It's cool to see massive, powerful "mounds" to ride skim style on and also cool to see big steep waves with a lip to slash on! This is stock ballast with just 550 lb bags each side midship. I have a 750 lb fat sac laying around and will buy another and piggyback those off my rear bags giving me 4,500 lbs of ballast and can't wait to see how mine shapes up! i'll buy some lead later in the season to stuff in the bow running 5,000-5,400 lbs in total.
Different wave shape for a more laid over skim style wave to play on. The Max is versatile!
Stock ballast with AutoWake engaged. Mmmmm lovely...
Ended up changing my financing from my dealers in-house financing and went with Essex instead today. Saved myself 1.25% in annual interest! Only thing I lose with the switch is one of the boat show specials was an extra year of free maintenance if you used their in-house. They valued that at $1,090 savings but with my new lower interest rate that will practically make up for itself, so it’s a wash. I’ll just do my own maintenance one year sooner than I planned . At least I still get the first year 10 hour and winterize maintenance for free. Main thing was a better interest rate for the long term. My salesman wasn’t pissed I made the change but I could tell it took him down a little so I’m sure they get kickbacks for using their in-house financing. Can’t help them there lol.
smart move. I would not value a year of service at anything near $1,000. It is really not difficult to do stuff yourself and total annual cost for parts/fluids if you do everything in the manual is probably abut $200.
smart move. I would not value a year of service at anything near $1,000. It is really not difficult to do stuff yourself and total annual cost for parts/fluids if you do everything in the manual is probably abut $200.
Yea after looking at the tutorials and how-to's people have made for the maintenance on these Raptor engines it seems pretty easy and straight forward. The nice thing about the Max rear locker storage is I can literally get my big ass down into the sides of the engine instead of having to hang myself over. V drive access is a matter of 4 screws to remove the cover.
Started pricing the Wakemakers stuff and man it adds up quick with fittings and such! Thankfully I already have one bag to save on some of the ballast upgrade cost. I think I'll be around $450-500 in fittings, hoses, additional 750 lb bag, crimp tool, etc. Until I get all of that stuff I'll probably just fill the 750 fat sac with the tsunami pump and play around with placement to lengthen the wave.
@haknslash When you order from wakemakers, first try calling and requesting a discount on the order. They were super helpful with me and gave a better discount than on any forums.
Yea after looking at the tutorials and how-to's people have made for the maintenance on these Raptor engines it seems pretty easy and straight forward. The nice thing about the Max rear locker storage is I can literally get my big ass down into the sides of the engine instead of having to hang myself over. V drive access is a matter of 4 screws to remove the cover.
Started pricing the Wakemakers stuff and man it adds up quick with fittings and such! Thankfully I already have one bag to save on some of the ballast upgrade cost. I think I'll be around $450-500 in fittings, hoses, additional 750 lb bag, crimp tool, etc. Until I get all of that stuff I'll probably just fill the 750 fat sac with the tsunami pump and play around with placement to lengthen the wave.
Not really. For instance, mine came with 5000 lbs of ballast capacity from the factory. However, I like to mess with things so I also keep 250 lbs of steel bags on board and have a 750 lb bow sac I can use if I want. Never have to move bags around - you can either fill or drain them to have the weight you want and then use the surf system to dial in the wave on either side.
No typically you add any additional bags you want and fill accordingly. Most boat Manufacturers can't provide more ballast than the rated boats capacity. Most everyone with a wake boat adds additional ballast to achieve a larger, more powerful wave than stock.
The Max has massive storage! The front ballast bag is all subfloor and the rear sacs are deeeep in the lockers. The midship under seat storage communicates with the rear lockers allowing me to plumb and add up to 900 lbs each side hidden under the seats while still allowing for room to store gear and crap. The Max has deep bow storage as well similar to a Yamaha but deeper. A lot of other wake boats simply don't have this kind of freeboard a Max does and a v-shaped bow sac consumes any bow storage, if there is storage space at all (some don't have any under the front seats and just flat fiberglass). Not the case with the Max. I'll be using lead wake bags in the bow to retain my storage while adding even more bow weight.
In short no you don't have to mess around with moving bags and all that. It's all about fine tuning the wave for many, myself included, so I want extra ballast for those times I don't have a lot of people on the boat and I want a big wave that can be powerful way back in the curl. This is also where the beauty of AutoWake system comes into to play. I can add all that weight and system will automatically adjust ballast where it needs to hold the desired or optimal pitch and roll designed for my boats hull. It simply scales as no matter the weight. There is no replacement for displacement when it comes to wake boats for creating waves. Pushing them further into the water is one of the main ingredients to getting big, powerful waves. Gotta pay to play with the big boys . Typically once you get your wake boat "dialed in" with testing, it's more or less small tweaks to ballast fill amounts, set AutoWake and you're off or can do it manually once you learn/know what your wave will shape like and what your boat likes/doesn't like.
MAXimum storage and ballast potential...
To help put that space into perspective look at this tall guy. He is STANDING UP in the rear locker!!!...
Or he can lay completely inside the cavernous midship storage!!!...
I think the Max is good for a couple of Jimmy Hoffa's
What's interesting is when you go and look at the expensive Centurions, Nautique G23's, Mastercrsft, etc you won't see storage anywhere near this deep or usable. Mainly because those boats have subfloor ballast all the way to the front and not as much freeboard so the available storage space height gets impacted. Don't get me wrong I love those high end boats but you get A LOT of bang for your buck with the Max. Sure it lacks some of the fancy high end screens (more things to break IMO) but what it lacks in tech it makes up for in potential. For once I actually wouldn't mind working inside the storage compartments lol. Compared to me shoving my big ass inside my AR192's compartments for LED wiring or whatever this should be night and day difference
Don't get me wrong, it comes stock with 3,000 lbs and you can make a perfectly surfable wave stock. Some of the pics I posted are stock waves, some just with a few hundred lbs of lead and some with extra ballast and/or lead. I just eventually will want more for even greater flexibility and wave shaping capabilities. On the lighter days if I want a big wave it's going to mean fill more ballast capacity. On bigger crew days I won't need to fill near as much, or I can for a monster wave with all that extra weight + full ballast. I just want to have a lot of flexibility and tuning.
Wake9 was able to finally get their video up of last years polar bear event. Some great footage of many boats. @OrangeTJ im sure you recognize that Donfather MB . His boat looks great on the water.
