Air intakes in bow of 80's nauti's Need em or not?

I have a '86 ski nauti 2001 and i want to put several hundred pounds of ballst in the bow. The problem is that on the right side of the bow there are like 3 hoses for(I assume) air intake. So you can only put a lot of weight on the left side which, obviously, makes the the wake lop sided. Do you really need these intakes or can you take them out? If you can't take them out then how do you put any weight on the right side without damaging the hoses?

i don't have that boat but my hoses have some slack to move em around a little. can you reach em to make them longer?

i wouldn't get rid of them. they are intakes and your blower also needs to move air. if that end is sealed, it'll have to pull air thrugh cracks and not move as much.

(Message edited by salty87 on January 22, 2004)

I just wedged a couple 60 pound qiukrete bags up there. Just make sure they wont fall into the hoses. And be careful about all that wieght up front because without any in the back it will ride crazy low in the front.....I took a bunch of nose dives just idling through the no wake zones near Chevy's on the river in sac 4th of july.

I needed compact weight to balance out the boat, so I went this route. from top to bottom-
25 lb. bag of shotgun pellets(Used those to make the next item)
40 lb. brick of lead, covered with multiple layers of Rubber-ize it.
the vhs tape is for size reference.