choppywaters
Petty Officer 2nd Class
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2012
- Messages
- 127
After installing Smart Tabs on our 20ft Stingray 597ZP we had to let it sit for over a week due to time and weather. We finally went out yesterday and it couldn't have been a more perfect day for it, very warm, warm breeze, hardly anyone out and no one at the dock. Heres the issues we were having, maybe this could help someone else. With about 800lbs of passengers and gear on board the boat would take it seemed forever to plane and when it finally was there I couldn't reduce speed too much or it would go nose up again and that made it very tough to tow a tube at low speeds with small kids. The boat also bounced up and down at mid to higher speeds making it an uncomfortable ride at times even with trying all kinds of trim positions. Well here's what we did to the boat to try to fix these issues, we went from a 19p prop to a 17p prop to help the holeshot but that only seemed to help a tiny bit. Then I installed the Smart Tabs- I went with the 1290-60 stainless steel with 60lb actuators. Holy crap! what a difference it made. After all the people I talked to about them I knew they would help but they really "fixed" every issue we were having. It was only me, my Wife and Daughter so only about 400lbs of passengers and gear so I filled the boat up with fuel to compensate. Any ways, once we were out of the no wake zone I let her fly and couldn't have been more happy with the results. I counted "1 Mississippi, 2 mississippi, 3 mississippi" and we were on plane. I throttled it back and we were cruising at right around 25mph on plane and about 2800 rpm's. Then I backed it off some more to see how slow it would still be on plane and the best we could do was just under 20mph. Then off we went again to see how well they helped with rougher water. The bay was a bit choppy and had 1-2ft waves, it was like a different boat! It seem to just cut right through with very minimal bouncing and those were only from the larger wakes from other boats. We went out to the lake and let it fly again and only about 3 seconds to plane again. We were moving right along at 35mph but it was so much more smooth with these tabs. I might stick the 19p on just to see how fast she really goes because with the 17p prop on we were at 35mph and 4200rpms and I had about 1/8 more throttle to go. In a nut shell the Smart Tabs fixed every issue we were having and the boat now is 10 times more enjoyable!
