ballast

[drewdwn]

I have an 05 outback with 1400lbs of ballast, 400 in the front and 1000 in the back. My wake doesn't seem to be very big. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to make it bigger?

[Smrtz]

Do you have the wakeplate? If so do you have it all the way up?

1400 pounds should throw a decent wake.

[drewdwn]

No wake plate. Is that something i can add on and where can i get one?

[JoeTechie]

A wakeplate will not do anything to a basic Outback - they have flat rear hulls.

-J

[drewdwn]

I need the weight for wakeboarding. Right now the wake seems flat, I can't jump very high off it

[JoeTechie]

How fast are you running ?

For the most part, that is a ski hull, designed for flat wakes. But with enough ballast it will sink and create a good wake. I'd see what happens at 2 mph slower and without the 400 lb up front.

-J

[Smrtz]

I dont know Joe, I have a little less than 1400 in weight but am using the 40/60 rule for weight in the bow and stern. While you are right I dont find the wakeplate makes a massive difference it does push the back end up or down depending on the setting to change the shape of the wake.

I have left the wakeplate all the way down many times gone out and can always tell by the shape of the wake that it isnt where its supposed to be.

Cheers

[JoeTechie]

The wakeplate alone cannot MAKE a wake in the base outback. In the LS and LSV and XLV it can. It is actually correcting those hulls natural tendancy to create a wake when down. So by allowing it to be removed from the water flow (all up) it will let the hull do what it is designed for - making wakes.
It can SHAPE a wake in the base Outback if there is ballast involved, and thus thue stern is already in the water unnaturally.

Just sometimes people feel it is like the wedge on a Malibu which is an upside down wing that pulls the stern into the water... it is not. It is the same technology as the TAPS on a Tige'.

-Joe

[pickle311]

I need the weight for wakeboarding. Right now the wake seems flat, I can't jump very high off it

it's all techniqe, your wake sould be plenty big enough to pull off any trick you can imagine, you're just not getting enough pop off the wake. I have the same boat and run between 1000 and 1500lbs depending on how many people I have in the boat, I've seen some of the most difficult tricks there are landed behind my boat, I had a guy land his first moby dick behind my boat a couple of weeks ago and I saw him easily nail pretty much any invert you could imagine. Keep practicing, you will get it. There are boats with much bigger wakes, but I bet you won't get any more air off of them either. Good luck.

[NCSUmoomba]

To me it sounds like you have too much weight in the back. In my 01 Outback I have about 600# (350# factory + one 260# fat sac) in the back and 400-450# (two 260# fact sacs, one under each bow seat, but I can't fill them all the way) in the front and the wake is pretty nice at about 21-22mph (not sure if my speedo is accurate, but we are running about 2600-2800rpm), although not huge. My buddy can land HS backrolls all day long and has landed a HS Raley once, but those are the only inverts he can do. On his wake to wake jumps, he is at least 6 feet off the water, and off a double up he probably 10 feet high. We threw another 260# fat sac in the back this weekend, and it got a little bigger, but maintaining speed was a tad more difficult (no Perfect Pass). We found that since the front of the hull is the only V shaped part, that weight in the front helped the shape of the wake more. Its no Malibu VLX, but pretty good for a "slalom ski" boat. Also, the wake is very speed sensitive. At 20mph, there is pretty bad whitewash on the wake crest, and at 23-24 the wake starts to get rampy and rounded.