Weighting

My question is about weighting an outback for larger wakeboard wakes. We bought an 04 outback with tower and love it. However, my son gave up skiing and started wakeboarding and he is progresssing quickly. He does board grabs, wrapped 360's etc and now feels he needs a larger wake to start practicing flips and advanced tricks. My question is, can a base outback, not ls or lsv, be weighted enough to produce large enough wakes for advanced tricks? If so, how should it be weighed? We are considering upgrading to an lsv, either outback or mobius, if it seems more appropriate to do that. Any suggestions?

Hey Isabeloutback, Let me guess you are running on Lake Isabel just outside of Dawson,ND. I live in Bismarck, ND and I have a 2001 Mobius. I had one factory ballast tank which made it easy to add additional ballast in the trunk. If you don't have the factory intake it would require drilling a hole in the hull for a pump pickup. Not something I would do myself. There are other options but you have to look at trailering weight and boat lift capacity. I am in Sacramento for a few weeks, if you want to talk when I get back I would be happy too or e-mail me at [email protected].

I have had my boat out at Isabel a few times, saw yours on the lift.

Later

I have a friend that pulls tantrums, backrolls, ralleys, scarecrows, and going for a double backflip all behind a little outboard bayliner w/ no tower.... but i could never do that behind a boat like that..i have an XLV to ride behind so that wake is nothin compared to an XLV... but my point is if its possible to do all that stuff behind a little outbaord, 19 ft. bayliner... he can do them behind an outback... maybe get some fat sacks in it and alot of riders will help... a full tank of gas never hurts either.

Isabeloutback,
I agree that weighting your Outback will definitely help. However, you must know that the base Outback has a completely different hull than the Outback LS, LSV and the Mobius LS and LSV. The LS and LSV hulls were specifically designed to displace water and create large wakes. The base Outback hull is a skiing hull, designed to create less wake for skiing. As jlawv says, you can pretty much wakeboard behind anything, but a larger wake with good shape makes progressing in the wake tricks much easier. I would consider going to an Outback or Mobius LS or LSV. Note, there is no difference between the Outback and Mobius LS and LSVs - the only difference is that the Mobius comes standard with items that all can be added to the Outback as options. I haven't compared, but I believe the intent was for a loaded Mobius LSV to be slightly less expensive than the equivalent, loaded Outback LSV. The difference between the LS and LSV models is the LS is a direct drive boat with the engine in the middle of the boat and the LSV is a v-drive boat with the engine in the rear. This does two things - it creates more space in the seating portion of the boat and it puts the engine weight in the rear, thus helping in creating a larger wake.