Ballast & Electrical Help for Newbie

Thanks in advance for taking the opportunity to look at this...I have a couple of questions. This past fall, I purchased my first wake boat. 05 LSV. Nothing crazy, but it was what we could afford & we're very happy with it. I apologize if the following are dumb questions.

The boat still has the stock ballast & although that will surf my wife & kids, I'm a big guy & it doesn't create the push necessary for someone of my size even with the biggest board. I was considering upgrading the ballast. It even struggles with my brother who is about 2/3 my weight. I noticed online that there are lots of people selling ballast bags that have come from newer boats that are much larger than the stock ones from my year. There are options for 750's & what I have is still the stock 250's. So my question, do I have to buy a certain brand or type of bag or so long as it will fit in the locker, can I just unplug the stock bags from the pump, buy any larger bag I want, & plug them into the existing pump?

Also, considering doing some interior LED lighting. I will preface this with the fact that I live in the upper Midwest so my boat is in storage. I'd like get the lights for my birthday or Christmas, but don't want to buy them and possibly run out of time to return them if it's going to be a bigger job than I'm willing to do. I know I can hook it up to one of the blank switches on the dash which is wonderful, but I'm curious, when I see people who have the inside of their boats wrapped, or lights in the cupholder areas, etc. I'm assuming this isn't some crazy challenging task, are you cutting holes for the wiring or is there a easy trick to running the wires either in the lockers or somewhere else so they can't be seen?

Lastly, I have a radio deck in the boat. It supposedly has blue tooth & I've even looked it up in the owner's manual of the head unit to see if there's something I'm missing, but it really won't connect. There are no aux hookups & the lakes we go to are pretty remote so we only have access to one radio station & even that is pretty spotty. I noticed you can grab the head unit and just unplug it from what looks like a big circuit board behind it. Can I just replace the head unit with any of the same brand and just push the new unit into the existing circuit board or will I need to replace them both? Anything else to consider?

Thank you!

first ballast. you can replace the rear bags with anything larger. if you have the old sprinkler valve setup, you have 1 hose in and 1 hose out and a vent. pretty straightforward. my old launch20 is VERY similar to your lsv and we went with 1100's in the rears. they don't quite fill up 100% before running out of room to expand so we found them to be the best choice to maximize the ballast. on that boat when we only had 4 peeps, we ran listed, not fully weighted with a suckgate as they weren't around yet. 1100's in the rear surf corner, factory 400 in the center ski locker. we put a 400lb sac in the bow and ran a 400lb sac on the surf side seat corner. that gave a good wave. rubrail was at the water surface. down side is it takes 15 or 20 to swap sides with the old sprinkler valve setup. we were going to add dual drain/fills but never did. it is pretty much plug/play but there are a few differences in connectors from bag to bag. I always tried to stick with fly-hi.
pm for more info if you like but sure others that have/had owned lsv's will chime in.

stereo, need more details. my launch20 was a simple headunit that we replaced with a newer kenwood unit. not knowing what you have and no pics make it hard to talk about. I would assume you have a simple deck, speakers and maybe an amp or 2.

I won't touch the led question as we never put any in the 4 boats we owned over the years. never saw a need for them. rather spend the money on boards or audio.

welcome and post up a pic of the whip....

Attachment 30136Attachment 30137

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Originally Posted by sandm

first ballast. you can replace the rear bags with anything larger. if you have the old sprinkler valve setup, you have 1 hose in and 1 hose out and a vent. pretty straightforward. my old launch20 is VERY similar to your lsv and we went with 1100's in the rears. they don't quite fill up 100% before running out of room to expand so we found them to be the best choice to maximize the ballast. on that boat when we only had 4 peeps, we ran listed, not fully weighted with a suckgate as they weren't around yet. 1100's in the rear surf corner, factory 400 in the center ski locker. we put a 400lb sac in the bow and ran a 400lb sac on the surf side seat corner. that gave a good wave. rubrail was at the water surface. down side is it takes 15 or 20 to swap sides with the old sprinkler valve setup. we were going to add dual drain/fills but never did. it is pretty much plug/play but there are a few differences in connectors from bag to bag. I always tried to stick with fly-hi.
pm for more info if you like but sure others that have/had owned lsv's will chime in.

stereo, need more details. my launch20 was a simple headunit that we replaced with a newer kenwood unit. not knowing what you have and no pics make it hard to talk about. I would assume you have a simple deck, speakers and maybe an amp or 2.

I won't touch the led question as we never put any in the 4 boats we owned over the years. never saw a need for them. rather spend the money on boards or audio.

welcome and post up a pic of the whip....

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So could be another dumb question, but the owners manual & sticker say the weight capacity is 1,480 lbs. The (3) stock bags - (2) 250's & (1) 400 - plus even just myself weight wise, that doesn't technically leave much room for extra weight...the suggestion to add a couple of 1100 lb bags, even without people would put you well above the capacity number...is this something I need to worry about?

What you are seeing is the face plate detaching from the head unit. Its concerning that you are seeing the PCB. If it has a detachable face plate, what should be left behind is a black piece with a row of male terminal tabs that contact the face plate when it pushed back on. So to answer your question, no, there is nothing that will do what you asked.

On that M303, IIRC, you need to go in and purge all the old connected devices. I believe it can only store 3. Once the old paired devices are purged, you should be able to connect your new device.

Attachment 30138

I guess I was wrong, sorry. As I mentioned the boat is in storage...this black plate in the picture is what I see, not a circuit board...whoops.

once again mla to the rescue on the audio front.
rilez, if you need/want to order flyhi bags, pm or email mla. he is on here a bunch but over on the tige forums, he is the guru of ballast/audio. he will sell you exactly what you need and his customer service is TOPS... MUCH better than wakemakers imo.
he can also sell you what you need if you want to replace the irritrol valve setup if you still have that.

as far as weights, do what you feel comfortable with but we routinely ran 800lbs of human weight and 2500lbs of water ballast in our launch20 and it was rated for MUCH less. if the rubrail wasn't at the water surface, the wave sucked. you just have to be VERY aware when stopping to pick up a rider how to slow the boat and not run over your own wake. took a lot of water over the front/rear in the past once in a while.
wave had a lot of push and was tall but one of the downsides to the shorter/shallower hulls is you will not get the length that the newer boats can put out. someone who has spent a lot more time with suckgates can chime in on how to weight/setup for that but you WILL need more ballast to get a good wave.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sandm

once again mla to the rescue on the audio front.
rilez, if you need/want to order flyhi bags, pm or email mla. he is on here a bunch but over on the tige forums, he is the guru of ballast/audio. he will sell you exactly what you need and his customer service is TOPS... MUCH better than wakemakers imo.
he can also sell you what you need if you want to replace the irritrol valve setup if you still have that.

as far as weights, do what you feel comfortable with but we routinely ran 800lbs of human weight and 2500lbs of water ballast in our launch20 and it was rated for MUCH less. if the rubrail wasn't at the water surface, the wave sucked. you just have to be VERY aware when stopping to pick up a rider how to slow the boat and not run over your own wake. took a lot of water over the front/rear in the past once in a while.
wave had a lot of push and was tall but one of the downsides to the shorter/shallower hulls is you will not get the length that the newer boats can put out. someone who has spent a lot more time with suckgates can chime in on how to weight/setup for that but you WILL need more ballast to get a good wave.

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I really appreciate the .02 & knowledge. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rilez

So could be another dumb question, but the owners manual & sticker say the weight capacity is 1,480 lbs. The (3) stock bags - (2) 250's & (1) 400 - plus even just myself weight wise, that doesn't technically leave much room for extra weight...the suggestion to add a couple of 1100 lb bags, even without people would put you well above the capacity number...is this something I need to worry about?

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Most people add as much weight as they can before:
* the boat will not plane out or get up to speed - prop upgrades will help your motor
* your bow is too low so you might take on water
* your stern is too low and you are taking on water to the rub rails, vents, other openings.

The weight capacity is for certification safety, but is generally when a boat will be at the point of being loaded up.

With my 2007 I had the ability to fill around 3K of ballast + people + gas. I had an upgraded prop and the boat ran good rpms at full load. I'm sure I was over that boat limit.

Here is a video of how we ran our 2005 LSV. As the others have said, you need to be wary of other boaters swamping you. You will need a new prop if you still have stock and we did the Wakemakers Gravity 3 upgrade to plumb the 2x rear and 1x ski locker. All the cabin/bow bags are filled manually.

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1Q...TA38ER9voDJPi4