Custom Falcon V Ballast Install Complete

KnuckleDragger · April 11, 2011

Looks familiar Knuck I hate to say it but I told you so when my dividers first popped it scared the hell out of me as well I thought I burst a sack.In the pics of your divider reinforcement did you just attach the channel to the panel with screws or through bolt them with machine screws??In the pics it's hard to tell if you just screwed them to the panel I advise you go back and through bolt them this will further stiffen the panels................H

It is just attached with 1" screws. The screws are just a hair from going through the whole panel so there's some good bite there. I didn't want anything exposed in the lockers. Although your screw heads don't look like they'd cause any problems. My screws held just fine during my water test so I figure I'll see how they hold up and if need be I'll swap them out for a bolt later.

h20king · April 11, 2011

What I'm sure you are going to run into is the pressure of the sack against the boards will flex the board tearing the screws from the panel when my dividers popped they actually tore the channel from the floor.Just use the cap head machine screws so they wont tear the sack and through bolt them by doing this the channel and the board become one piece and you will never have another problem JMTC.......................H

Joe B · May 13, 2011

Bump as it just helped me figure out what guage wire to get. Such a good writeup. THX

KnuckleDragger · July 12, 2011

For those that are interested, I ended up changing my ballast design slightly. I'll be updating my blog sometime soon. The ballast system has been working great with the exception of two issues. First, the bosworth check valves that wakemakers now sells tend to bleed some air. There's a work around for that as I posted earlier in this thread. Second, I noticed that my fill times for my 1100lb sac were about 8min 30secs but the drain time was under 5min 30secs. I first suspected that this may be due to the air bleed in the check valves so I put a cork in the side thru hulls and still got the same fill times. That made me suspect that possibly the two johnson pumps running off a single 1" stock thru hull may not be quite enough to allow the pumps to run at full capacity. The pumps were not starving for water by any means but I suspected maybe they weren't drawing as much water as they could since my empty times were so much faster and the water takes a similar route. I realized that the difference between my drain and fill was that I am pulling from two separate hoses when draining (one on the top of the sac and one on the bottom). When filling I am only pulling through the single 1" thru hull inlet. So I said what the heck, and drilled another hole in my boat to give each pump its own inlet. This has seemed to help quite a bit. I timed the fill time this past weekend and it now fills in 5min 30secs instead of 8min 30secs. Much better! :thumbsup:

I'm not a plumbing expert so I can't say why I saw these types of results. I think it is documented somewhere that a 1" hose should supply enough volume for the two pumps but maybe it is a different case since the pumps are pulling the water instead of it being fed to them. Also, the inner diameter of a 1" hose fitting is more like 3/4" so that comes into play as well. Anyway, just thought I'd let everyone know about the results.

DarksideR · July 12, 2011

Awesome work!

I was thinking it was head pressure from the full bag flowing out that was helping it move faster, but your fix appears to have proven your theory!

poosie · March 27, 2012

knuckle just read your ballast write up and then realized i read it just about 1 year ago as well. great information as i am waiting for my parts to arrive to start mine. wont be as elaborate but the install info will help out alot. thanks for the tips.