Re: New trim tab brand, opinions???
True Story. A few years back , I was looking for a smaller boat than my<br />Four Winns cuddy, mainly for taking the family out on small lakes for water<br />skiing and tubing. After looking around a bit, I purchased a Stingray 180<br />RX bowrider. It seemed to meet our space and performance needs and seemed<br />like a real value for it's cost. And it was, except for one glaring fault.<br />At anything less that W.O.T and speeds below 35-40, it would porpoise<br />horribly unless you kept the trim fully down. Because you had to drive with<br />bow always plowing the water, instead of planing as it was designed to,<br />cornering was very unpredictable, gas mileage suffered and handling in<br />general was poor. It got to be so bad, my wife refused to drive it when I<br />wanted to ski. Having owned many other boats that you could trim at any<br />speed (once on plane), I knew this was not correct and tried to work with<br />first my dealer, then Stingray the company, to get this corrected. To make<br />a long story short, lets just say they both were an absolute joke. All I<br />had to show for months of effort of trying to go through the proper<br />channels, was countless unanswered phone calls and e-mails, wasted trips to<br />the dealer, money wasted on another prop, a lot of frustration and the<br />first hand knowledge (after trying other 18 & 19 foot Stingrays out) is<br />that they all porpoise just as badly! Many other disgruntled owners had<br />also contacted me with this same issue, after I started asking for help on<br />various boating forums. But just as I was convinced this is a flaw in the<br />design and was putting the boat up for sale, I learned of the smart tabs<br />from Nauticus. I contacted the company, who was very helpful and promised<br />they would completely fix my porpoising problem. After all I had gone<br />through with the shallow answers and promises from my dealer and Stingray,<br />I was extremely skeptical, but I went ahead and ordered a set, figuring it<br />was a lot cheaper than buying another boat. Got them a few days later and<br />installed them in about an hour.<br />Let's just say the results were far beyond my highest hopes. There is<br />absolutely no more porpoising. None whatsoever, no matter what speed or<br />trim the motor is at. Additional benefits are that the thing planes almost<br />instantly, it virtually doesn't even lift the bow at all! You feel like<br />you're in a car, not a boat when you take off! Because of this the hole<br />shot improvement is amazing. Heavy slalom skiers I could not pull out of<br />the water previously, now are no problem. Gas mileage is improved and the<br />thing corners predictably and rides much better. I even called the owner of<br />the company and thanked him personally. That was 2 years ago, and I can<br />truly say I am now 100% satisfied with this same boat I was so disgusted<br />with before the smart tabs installation, and can't even imagining using it<br />without the smart tabs. I hear so much about boaters looking for<br />performance improvements with expensive engine and prop modifications, <br />or complicated hydraulic or electric trim tabs, <br />when they could just add a set of these and get better performance<br />improvements (except top speed, that was not affected) at a fraction of the<br />cost. Several of my boating friend have installed them after they heard of<br />my success, with similar positive results. So go ahead and give them a try,<br />you won't regret it. Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions.
<br /><br />I was hoping someone could look at the pics at the URL above and let me know if any of the brands you are used to look the same.. and if they are any good...<br /><br />no??<br /><br />maybe now I know why people bump things up..<br />worth a try. 