Echo Skis 5k Budget Build

[EchoSkis]

Hey everyone,

My name is Ryan and I'm with Echo Skis (ww.echoskis.com). We are starting a 5 thousand dollar budget build. Now the boat we have, a 1985 Sylvan Ski-Tastic, isn't exactly a Moomba but we would like to the do the build here since this forum seems to have a really good group of do it yourselfers. Also, we are using some parts from a gravity games 3 ballast system. So, we might have some questions for the Moomba community about that.

Here are some goals of the project.
-The boat must be competent slalom tug for a 15 off skier while also being able to provide an ok wakeboarding wake and a workable surf wake.
-We also want to be able to switch event to event fast. So, our goal is to be able to fill our ballast in less than 5 minutes and drain in less than 8.
-Since our boat has pretty low sides we don't want list the boat a ton so we are going to add a surf system to it.
-Automation, I want to just flick a switch for the ballast and the surf system.
-All of this has to be done for a total of $5000 (that includes the boat!)

Here is a rough budget:
$1500 -Boat(1985 Sylvan Ski-Tastic direct drive
$500 -Ballast system
$200 -Surf system
$50 -Surf platform modification
$600 -Driveline repair(the boat has a bad vibration)
$500 -Trailer Brakes
$200 -Hydrofurf
$800 -Tower/tower accessories
$600 -Miscellaneous
$5000 -Total

We will have the boat here on the 19th and parts have already started coming in. Hopefully we will have something worth while to show in the next few days.

~Ryan
Echo Skis

[viking]

SWEET! Look forward to this build

[sandm]

want to be able to switch event to event fast. So, our goal is to be able to fill our ballast in less than 5 minutes and drain in less than 8.
-

this cracks me up. in today's ballast world, asking for those fill/drain times is like using 14.4 dialup to access the internet :)

anxious to see the build and see the end results. that's a great bottom line total to get a family on the water in a first boat. bet this might be a thread that's reposted a bunch for others not wanting to shell out g's for a new boat.
should start a thread when you begin and post a lot of pics along the way.

[zabooda]

"The boat must be competent slalom tug for a 15 off skier while also being able to provide an ok wakeboarding wake and a workable surf wake." The use of "competent, ok, and workable" is vague. The boat companies would love to design a boat that can do all three activities very well but they all end up with different models for different activities. Not many surf boats have really low sides and adding ballast will make the boat have even lower sides. I would recommend you re-evaluate the boat you plan to use as it is easier to ski behind a surf boat than surf behind a ski boat.

[EchoSkis]

Thanks for the comments guys.
Sandm, great simile. Those time our or max. We figured those time off of how long it takes someone to get ready to ski or board. We hope to get our time to look more like 3 for fill and 5 for drain.
Zabooda, I can go into a little more detail of what we are after.
Slalom: I want someone who skis through the course at 36mph at 28 off on a modern slalom boat to be able to ski through the course with our boat at 36mph at 15 off.
Wake: Honestly for wake I'm not really sure how to quantify it. Maybe someone else has a way to measure it?
Surf: Surf is probably our lowest priority. We thought of using a bigger boat but that would make the slalom goal unattainable. If we can get adults that have never surfed before able to toss the rope then we will be happy with the surf wake.
If our budget was not as small as it is we probably would have started with an outback v.
I'll start posting pictures and plans once parts come in.

Thanks,
Ryan
Echo Skis

[trayson]

Ryan, I had a Supra Sunsport Direct drive, and I got it about as dialed as I could for slalom/wake/surf.

First off, your fill/empty times are going to be directly affected by your choice of bag size. Let's see some pics of your boat so we can get an idea of what you're working with. As you well know the choices for where to put ballast are VERY limited on a DD. typically you're looking at under the rear seat, and since it sounds like you might have a closed bow, you can likely put bow weight in, although I never used bow weight in my sunsport. Again, with a lower freeboard DD, you aren't going to want a ton of bow weight anyway or you'll be taking water over the bow all day long.

Also the GIII pumps and sprinkler valves you're getting aren't what anyone would call fast. the drain pumps are 800GPH and the fill pump is supposedly 2000 but more likely will perform at 1200 at best. The sprinkler valves are a notorious bottleneck. But I guess if you're looking at small bags, then MAYBE you could accomplish your goals. Again, tell us what size of bags and locations you're thinking about.

I also was one that retrofitted a manual version of a Nautique NSS surf system onto my boat. You're dreaming if you think you can have a "flick of the switch" deployed surf system on any boat for $200. I mean, the price of ONE electric lenco trim tab actuator is $200. However, it is actually possible to come close to your $200 budget and have manual 10 second deployment of NSS style surf blades and stay close to your $200 budget for a surf system, assuming you have a flat rear hull like I did on the sunsport.

Here is all the info you'd ever want on my DIY surf system:
https://forum.moomba.com/showthread.php?24375-Trayson-s-DIY-quot-Supra-Surf-System-quot-(SSS)-modeled-after-the-NSS&highlight=surf+system

Keep in mind that to get a decent surf wave on my sunsport that has a lot more freeboard, that I had 350 under the rear seat, and 750's on either side of the doghouse.

[viking]

I basically did the same build with my DD as well. But the price of my boat alone blew your budget out of the water (pardon the pun).
To Surf the quickest ballast fill time is going to be load it with peeps. If talking bags I ended up doing the under seat surf sack as well as a side sack along the doghouse on surf side. I plumbed in two manual valves to be able to use the same pump to fill both at the same time or isolate. To empty I used a pump for the rear sack and portable Tsunami pump for the side sack. Here's my thread but pics are missing:
https://forum.moomba.com/showthread.php?12648-Poor-Man-s-Ballast

[snyderaaron]

FYI Miscellaneous needs to be a lot higher :)

[EchoSkis]

Warning long post ahead: summary, 1350 lbs ballast, NSS with diy waterproofed actuators.

Right now we have a 900 pound sac to replace the rear seat and a 450 pound sac to go under the closed bow sideways right in front of the drivers/spotters seat. Trying to keep it as far back as possible. If we need more weight we can add some along side the engine but I want to try and keep the weight to a minimum because of it being a smaller boat. We are getting essentially two of the factory GIII systems. We got them for an amazing deal from 996scott and Newty (Thanks again). Trying to work with what we have is going to make our setup a little odd. I won't know for sure until the parts arrive but we will probably be running two fill pumps per bag and two drain pumps per bag. Once we get the parts I'll draw up a diagram for our plan. Before I do though I have a question about sprinkler valves. I know that they are very restrictive so I am going to try and avoid them in high flow areas but how reliable are they at stopping water from going through them?

Trayson,
I'm glad you found this thread. I have a couple of your projects bookmarked and I'm sure I'll have some questions for you. One that I have right now is, how much did your surf tab affect low speed steering?
As far as an automated surf system for around $200 we are going to be taking a bit of a gamble. The plan is to do a NSS style setup much like yours but instead of using lenco actuators we are going to use some cheap actuators and waterproofing them ourselves the same way diy submarine people do it. Here is a link showing that
http://www.submarineboat.com/waterproofing.htm
This might work or it will be a total failure. But if it fails we can rip off the actuators and still have a manual setup like your Supra's.

Viking,
Were you able to surf with the ballast setup in your thread?

[EchoSkis]

little update;
Let me start by saying that the ballast system is going to be funky and is not my ideal configuration. This is because it is being pieced together with what I can find on the cheap. With that said here is my plan so far and my plan will most likely change a bit.

I'm starting with a 450 lbs bag in the bow and a 900 lbs bag where the rear seat normally is. If the boat can handle more weight I can plump more ballast into the system. The bags are both straight line sumo sacs. I choose these because of the threaded inlets and outlets but also because they have 5 ports per bag. This is important because I am hoping to run 4 pumps per bag, 2 drain, 2 fill. I will have to modify the quick connect port to permanently accept my vent line.

For the fill it will be pretty simple, two pumps coming off a manifold each with their own fill line and bag inlet. each line will need a check valve or vented loop. So, here is my first question, for a vented loop to work does it need to be higher than the bag?

The drain and vent lines are a bit confusing.
-While filling the sprinkler valve on the vent line will be open.
-While draining
-The vent line sprinkler valve will close.
-The secondary drain line with a sprinkler valve will be open
-To get the last bit of water out of a bag the secondary line will close and only the primary will pump.

I'm looking for feedback so take a look at the attached diagram and start telling me why it won't work.
Once I get a little closer to installing the system I'm sure I will need some guidance on details like pump orientation.

21789

Trayson,
I'm glad you found this thread. I have really enjoyed the mods you did on your Supra. For the surf system I plan on doing a NSS one like yours. For the actuators I'm taking a big gamble and waterproofing some standard linear actuators myself. I am going to try it on one side and if it works, great, if not then I will have a nice manual set-up like yours. While your NSS was deployed how much did it affect your steering at low speeds?

Viking,
Are you able to surf with the ballast setup you mention in your thread?

Snyderaaron,
Yeah... $600 is pretty wishful thinking. If we need more it will have to come from the $800 set aside for the tower. The boat came with an extended pylon that we can use for boarding.

As requested her is a picture of the boat.
21790

[viking]

Yes I could surf ropeless no problem. The pocket is not very long and were really up close and personal to the back of the boat but it got the job done!!

[trayson]

I think you're making your ballast system way more complicated than you need to.

If you have 5 ports to work with on each bag, that's freaking awesome.

Do you already have intake thru-hulls on your boat? If not, use the mushroom style and not the scupper style, and then go to your Tee with your two intake pumps. Put a check valve inline. (check valves are cheaper than vented loops and all you're doing is preventing passive draining of the bags back through the fill pumps when turned off). I don't know much about vented loops because honestly I didn't use them in my aerator system.

Make sure your fill pumps are as close to the thru hull as possible. Either put them vertically with the input facing down, or if you have to put the pump sideways, then make sure the output it pointed up to the sky.

Now, I'm scratching my head at what you're doing with the drain side. Here is what I would do if I was you:
Run your drain pumps from the bottom of the bag and put your drains as far up and forward as you can without making the run toooo long. as long as your drains are ultimately above the top of the bag then water isn't going to leak out of them. Maybe this is where you were thinking of employing the sprinkler valves?? to basically cap the drain line because it'll be hard to get the drain outlet higher than the bag? I don't like sprinkler valves. they are a bottleneck and make your system slow. If you can get away with having your drain and vent lines above the height of you bag, then you're golden. (on both my drain and vent lines, I loop my lines up to the very top of my gunwales. I haven't really had any problems with passive draining thus far. I also criss cross my rear vent and drains to the opposite side of the boat because I list the boat. this wouldn't apply to you with a surf system). I used 90 degree plastic thru-hulls for my drains because it made it really easy to loop the hose up higher in the gunwales than the drain and back down to the thruhull.

I guess to me it sounds like you're trying to use sprinkler valves to overcome some passive draining that might not be a problem if you can engineer your hose runs higher than the tops of the bags.

My NSS only stuck out 3" on the side and about .75 to 1" on the bottom. so at slow speeds, yes you would notice that turning away from the gate took more effort than turning toward the gate. But again, it's only 3" sticking out the side and it was still possible to turn against the gate, it just took more time and distance to accomplish the turn. in contrast, I had a HUGE ghetto gate on my XLV and turning against that gate was basically impossible. That said, you get used to just turning with the gate really quickly. it's not a big deal.

[EchoSkis]

If you have 5 ports to work with on each bag, that's freaking awesome.
Yup, a lot of the Sumo Sacs come with 2 threaded ports on the bottom, 2 threaded ports on the top and one quick connect on the top.


Do you already have intake thru-hulls on your boat?
Not yet I'm going with two mushrooms.

Put a check valve inline. (check valves are cheaper than vented loops and all you're doing is preventing passive draining of the bags back through the fill pumps when turned off). I don't know much about vented loops because honestly I didn't use them in my aerator system.
I'm going to try using these vented loops in the bow. link (http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-4-PLASTIC-INLET-VENTED-LOOP-FOR-MARINE-BOAT-TOILET-HEAD-FIVE-OCEANS-/291283660376?hash=item43d1dbee58&vxp=mtr) They are used for marine toilets so I figure they might work. In the back I'm not sure if I will be able to mount a loop higher than the bag. (if that is necessary)


Now, I'm scratching my head at what you're doing with the drain side.
Since the boat will also be used for slalom I want to make sure I can get the max amount of water out of the bag. The sprinkler valves on the vent line and one drain line would be so that I can raisin the bag. It would be more practical to just use check valves and that might be the way I go.

Thanks for taking a look at my plan!

[trayson]

That vented loop looks encouraging, especially for the money. Make sure you report back on its use. :-)

[EchoSkis]

Hey guys,
I have been able to put some work into this over the last few days. The first two days was just spent bringing the boat back from the dead. It hadn't been run in a few years so I went through and replaced some basic components like plugs, hoses, impeller and cleaned the carb.
Next was the ballast install. I got some GGIII parts from Newty and 996scott (thanks again). After seeing what they gave me I ordered everything else I needed. I changed my ballast setup a bit. The front bag is filled by a rule 2000 and drained by a rule 700. The rear bag is filled by a rule 2000 and a rule 700. Then it is drained with a double rule 700 setup. I did away with the sprinkler valves and just ran a thru hull for for each vent and drain line. Both Rule 2000 has it's own 3/4" thru hull and the rule 700 used for filling has a 1/2" thru hull. Everything else pretty much stayed to plan.
I will post some pictures and a breakdown of the cost after the weekend. Hopefully we can test the system out on Monday. We have been busy preparing for our trip to the collegiate water skiing All-Stars tournament this weekend. If you are going to be near Decatur Illinois stop by our booth and say hi.

~Ryan

[newty]

Glad you got some use out of that stuff. Keep us updated on the progress. Oh and, Pics or it didn't happen!