Long time lurker but first post.
We've recently moved to a 1999 Capri 1850 bow rider with 210 v6 Mercruiser V6. It has a 1.62:1 Alpha 1 Leg.
It's the first stern drive we've had so things are a little different and I'd appreciate some advice after our first familiarization cruise today.
First challenge:
Having come from a big heavy deep V 18" cuddy with only a 130 E-tec I thought I'd get a free facelift from the g forces on acceleration from my 210 hp. Um - no, the experience lines are still there....... Family of five in the boat - Me and the Boss and three kids, 1/2 tank of gas and not much else, except the dog - and things weren't quite as brutal as I thought/hoped they'd be. It wasn't sluggish but not as rapid as I'd imagined.
I think it's a function of the final drive ratio and the propellors. Having hunted through about a million posts about this particular boat on this and other sites it seems most 185 Capri's of my vintage have either the 135 3.0 or the 190 4.3, and I understand they have different ratio legs. I've been trying to balance the effect that this would make on peoples comments/recommendations and experiences regarding propellors and pitch and if I understand this correctly, I have a higher gearing so should be swinging a lower pitch prop than those recommended for the 1.81:1 camp if I want to really leap out of the water - top speed is not what I'm after.
The prop which the boat arrived with is a 21" Hi-5 and I'm sure it would pull past 4000 rpm on a long enough lake but I didn't have one of those today - I ran out lake and courage at 3900 rpm and 50 mph on the speedo. The holeshot is okay but not outstanding. I''m sure it's just too high a pitch.
I also tried a 19" Offshore 4 blade which was a nicer prop, pulled closer to recommended rpm @4200 rpm before the end of the lake and hole shot was better but not really what I'd like for water sports, especially pulling a slalom skier up from deep water. It feels more like the all round prop for days where getting wet is not the principal activity but my gut feeling is that it's still a little too tall.
Is my thinking correct and what would folks recommended as a good ski focused prop for this boat. Is 15" going to be too low?
Next question:
The bow rise takes a bit of getting used to. I'd appreciate thoughts from those who have fitted this model with trim tabs, either Smart Tabs or controllable types. I have both sitting the garage. If I went the Lectro Tab way, where have people installed the control switch on the nice curvy dash?
Last question -
While I got the owners manuals, I cannot find any reference to what I presume is a depth display (a three digit digital screen) in the middle of the dash. I think it has an alarm mode which one can set, and then it reverts to a display, but I can't work out whether it's displaying in feet, metres, fathoms or something else.
Many thanks in advance
Graeme
We've recently moved to a 1999 Capri 1850 bow rider with 210 v6 Mercruiser V6. It has a 1.62:1 Alpha 1 Leg.
It's the first stern drive we've had so things are a little different and I'd appreciate some advice after our first familiarization cruise today.
First challenge:
Having come from a big heavy deep V 18" cuddy with only a 130 E-tec I thought I'd get a free facelift from the g forces on acceleration from my 210 hp. Um - no, the experience lines are still there....... Family of five in the boat - Me and the Boss and three kids, 1/2 tank of gas and not much else, except the dog - and things weren't quite as brutal as I thought/hoped they'd be. It wasn't sluggish but not as rapid as I'd imagined.
I think it's a function of the final drive ratio and the propellors. Having hunted through about a million posts about this particular boat on this and other sites it seems most 185 Capri's of my vintage have either the 135 3.0 or the 190 4.3, and I understand they have different ratio legs. I've been trying to balance the effect that this would make on peoples comments/recommendations and experiences regarding propellors and pitch and if I understand this correctly, I have a higher gearing so should be swinging a lower pitch prop than those recommended for the 1.81:1 camp if I want to really leap out of the water - top speed is not what I'm after.
The prop which the boat arrived with is a 21" Hi-5 and I'm sure it would pull past 4000 rpm on a long enough lake but I didn't have one of those today - I ran out lake and courage at 3900 rpm and 50 mph on the speedo. The holeshot is okay but not outstanding. I''m sure it's just too high a pitch.
I also tried a 19" Offshore 4 blade which was a nicer prop, pulled closer to recommended rpm @4200 rpm before the end of the lake and hole shot was better but not really what I'd like for water sports, especially pulling a slalom skier up from deep water. It feels more like the all round prop for days where getting wet is not the principal activity but my gut feeling is that it's still a little too tall.
Is my thinking correct and what would folks recommended as a good ski focused prop for this boat. Is 15" going to be too low?
Next question:
The bow rise takes a bit of getting used to. I'd appreciate thoughts from those who have fitted this model with trim tabs, either Smart Tabs or controllable types. I have both sitting the garage. If I went the Lectro Tab way, where have people installed the control switch on the nice curvy dash?
Last question -
While I got the owners manuals, I cannot find any reference to what I presume is a depth display (a three digit digital screen) in the middle of the dash. I think it has an alarm mode which one can set, and then it reverts to a display, but I can't work out whether it's displaying in feet, metres, fathoms or something else.
Many thanks in advance
Graeme