Wake Tower

I have a 03 Outback. I want to add a tower to it. What type should I go with? The Moomba tower or a aftermarket one? I want to have a fold down capability so that I can get the boat under my canopy with no problems. Any advice would help.
ST

Well a couple of things to consider...
The factory Rad-A-Cage tower looks great with the lines of the boat but is somewhat difficult to fold down with only one person. Basically you remove two bolts from the back legs of the tower (they have large rubberized areas to grab onto, no tools required) and rotate the entire tower forward onto the bow of the boat. Make sure you don't drop the back bolts into the water! You will need to put life jackets or some other kind of cushion on the sides of the deck so the tower will not rest on your gel coat or buy the Rack Jack to hold the tower up, it sits over the bow light, very nice product. Factory tower will cost around 2,400.00 installed

If you choose to go aftermarket you can save some money if you go with a Monster Tower or some other "universal" tower, but you will most likely need to do the install yourself to really see a savings. I put a Monster Tower on our Ouback LS a couple of years ago and the install was fairly straight forward and that tower was far more rigid than the factory cage I have on our new Mobius LSV, especially side to side movement. Folding the Monster Tower was a lot easier than folding down the factory cage, although I do fold the factory cage by myself now, just took some practice.

Buy what fits in your budget and looks good to you. All of the towers on the market today are pretty good. I can tell you that Monster Tower offered the best customer service I have ever dealt with, even better than Skiers Choice who has been great to me with both boats I have owned. Good luck.

I would agree with jburnside. There is some side sway in the rad a cage tower. You can also go to newdimensiontowers.com and they have a tower made just for your boat. They even put the "Moomba" in the crossmembers. They run $1,900 and fold forward just as the rad a cage. I have not found it to hard to lay it down, but it does help to have two people doing this.

I even added a factory Moomba tower mounted bimini to mine and it works great.

They also have the tower rack for $250.

Just a thought.

Good luck.

Doug, t-town

Thanks for the info. How bad is the side to side movement on the rad a cage? Does it make a lot of noise? Does it also make a difference that I am an old football player and weigh 240lbs? Just getting into wakboarding and I want this tower to be the right purchase. Thanks for the help.

There is no side to side noise. the side sway is not bad. My tower is a 05 New Deminsion tower that looks just like the new ones. My boat is a 02 Outback that was a repo. The people that owned the boat took off the old tower (orginal moomba tower) and the new one fits perfect.

Any more questions, just email me at [email protected]

The side to side sway does not cause any noise issues. If you choose a factory tower I would recommend that you not add too much additional weight to the tower (i.e. loads of speakers, light bar, and extra racks), the most I will add to mine is a single pair of tower speakers. I will tell you that I weigh in at 200 lbs and my wife says that when I pull out hard or cut back hard across the wakes the tower will sway around 4 inches or more left or right. I have also noticed the tower will sway when the boat is on the trailer and you go over rough road surfaces.

To my tower's defense, we have nearly 60 hours on the new boat and the sway has not caused any structural problems what-so-ever. I think that Skier Choice has finally acknowledged the sway concern and that's why all the new boats are getting the new larger diameter, new design towers. But it looks like the tower I have will still be offered on the base Outback and the Outback LSV so it must not be causing too many complaints.

I'm sure whatever tower you choose, if installed correctly, will give you years of trouble free service. Pull the trigger on one and go enjoy the rest of your summer!