Zodiac Futura MKII Sport shaft length?

[Speedtuner]

I agree with Zodiac Cortex, all those things will make your Futura run faster, one serious thing you can do is to have your outboard sent out (if you have the money) to have it bored out and fitted with a new tuner pipe and a few other neat tricks that I actually experienced many times with an old friend. 50 Hp Yamaha on a 2000 Sport Futura (large speed tubes) he managed after much money and tinkering to push the 50 HP outboard nearing the 100 HP range, and 50 plus miles per hour. Yes you are on the knife's edge when you push the throttle down, of course this knd of speed is not for everyone sand can be very dangerous. BUT WHAT A THRILL!

[Speedtuner]

Nice video Cortex.

[Northern Pike]

Nice video and thanks for the useful information. going fast is fun, but I seek a realistic compromise. I usually have lots of stuff in my boat: dive gear and buddy, etc. A little more speed would be nice though. I really want more HP but that will have to wait until I come across a great deal on a motor, or win a lottery. I guess next I'll try increasing the motor angle. I'm in the middle hole now.

[Northern Pike]

Tilted my motor out to the 3rd hole. Got almost 2 mph increase in max speed. I have to go a little easy climbing out of the hole, though. Thanks cortex.

[mgalvez]

Nice Northern Pike! I am finishing up all the little lose ends on my boat. Just got the ignition wired up. I bought a motorcycle/PWC battery and wired it. Now, how the hell do I mount this thing and where? Any ideas would be awesome. I am going to take it out to a lake tomorrow to get it ready for an ocean ride on Sunday.

[Northern Pike]

Which motor did you get? Even an electric start can be pulled in a pinch. There's a notch in the flywheel for such. In a OMC, anyway. My battery died last summer and left me in a bad spot. I did manage to pull the 40 OMC over using a spare rope ( which I ALWAYS carry) and the notch on the flywheel. It wasn't difficult. However extenuating circumstances made for a much longer story than I'm prepared to write, right now.
Since then I carry 2 when venturing far from civilization. I use a gel cell wheelchair battery for a spare, in a wheelchair box. When I'm home it powers my my kid's toy Jeep. If tipped or rolled it won't leak electrolyte.
Here's a pic of both.



and just the main battery



The horizontal bungie is supposed to keep the hooks of the battery bungie away from the tube, however I don't trust it entirely and have been stuffing an old life cushion between the battery box and pontoon for added insurance. I had a bungie hook abrade the pontoon on my old boat and don't want to see that happen again.
Good luck, Safe boating!

[cortex]

Thanks for the feedback on my post guys. ;-)

I've had a bit too much to do lately so I haven't had much time with my Futura.
On the other hand it is getting quite cold over here so this means that there isn't any rush with getting the boat ready. There are a lot of things I want to get fixed on the boat and also a lot of things I want to upgrade/enhance. So I will for sure keep myself busy in my garage this winter.

Speedtuner, sounds like your friend managed to squeeze every last hp available out of his engine. Cool!
I will do some lighter modifications to my engine... when everything else has been done.
BTW, I am a bit surprised that your friend "only" hit 50 mph (since I hit over 47 mph with my 40 hp)... I would have expected somewhere around 70 mph with that kind of power available. At least if you can get hold of prop with enough pitch... and also if the engines gear-ratio is ok.

I am really looking forward to spring, then I'll make a much better vid of the boat, and hopefully I'll be able to go a lot faster.

Right now I'm trying to get the middle-keel to get airtight again. I know from experience that it is a loosing battle. ;-)
One thing that I am seriously considering is to open up a small hole in the keel and insert a (kite)bladder into it.
Don't know if someone else on this forum are kiteboarders... but the bladders on inflatable kites should be excellent to use inside a broken keel. You can order them in basically any length/diameter you need and then put a valve on the bladder so it fits inside the old Zodiac valve. As long as you can get the old keel tight enough to keep dirt/sand/etc away from the kite-bladder it should be fine. And if you get a puncture it is easy repair and cheap to replace. Anyone that has tried this approach before?

[cortex]

Hi all,

Haven't posted for a (long) while. :-)
So what happened with my Futura-going-fast-project? Well, things have been getting a bit complicated with adding my 60 hp (now modified to 70 hp) to the boat and keeping things in one piece.
Last autumn I had most of the things ready and made a couple of speed-runs with the boat, but still have a lot of way to go with getting the engine high enough over the transom. I'm now building a custom jack-plate for my Futura that will make things a lot faster... I still miss some 5-600 RPM on the engine, and with the current prop I can for sure mount the engine a lot higher.
Anyway, I hit 47 knots and was increasing even more as I got the balance sorted out (quite interesting at those speeds :-)). Then sadly both my futura-keels blew up and I was really close to wipe out in a big way.

The keels had delaminated at the aft, i.e the seams held together just fine but the material didn't. On the other hand that is kind of expected since the boat is from 1990.
I have now spent a lot of time this winter to engineer a new solution for the futura keels.
I might actually be on to something really interesting; the solution I'm working on will make the Futura-keels extremely stiff and although it will add maybe 10 kilos to the weight of the boat I expect the new "semi-rigid" keels to really enable the boat to go 50+ knots.

Will keep you posted on the project as it moves along.