so my parents have an inboard/outboard chapparal that i ride behind, and basically the wake is pathetic to say the least. besides looking into fat sacs, is there anything else i could use to help beef up the wake any.
Any kind of weight will help. Also, you may be able to buy a wake plate or a trim tab of sorts that you can adjust up and down to change the shape of the wake.
Cary, there are a couple of threads in the archive on I/O weighting to give you some more veiwpoints. Basically if you put a hydrofoil on the outdrive (cheap) you can maintain speed better and get out of the hole better. Then load whoever you can in the boat for weight and put most of them near the front. After you're up to speed trim up a some to shape and clean up the wake.
I put around 350lbs of sand in the front of our 19' i/o under the bow cushions and it works fairly well. Trim up until you feel the prop beginning to cavitate. This is a picture of our wake w/ 2 people:
I have a Stingray 195LR w/ the 4.3L Volvo w/ a 19 3 blade prop. I'm planning on putting a tower on this winter. I have nauticus trim tabs for pulling skiiers. I retract them when wakeboarding because they f up the wake at lower speeds.
What I've found helps a lot is to trim up so much that the boat essentially is going just slower than planing speed. It feels like the boat is plowing through the water and it throws a decent wake. It's tough to hold speed driving like this, but w/ a little practice in hearing the pitch of the engine, you can do a pretty good job.
We basically have the same boat, mine has the tower on it stock though, it's made by XTP which I think is the same company that makes MC towers. I have 4.3 merc. Thinking about putting a 4 blade 16pitch prop on with about 1000 of ballast.
i have tried a couple different things with my boat (sandbags, work out weighs) but the best bang for the buck is fat sacs. I run a BG 600# bag in the ski locker and i have two fly high 250# side sacs which i usually put both in the bow or one up front and one against the engine depending on how many people i have in the boat. also i run a 19p high-5 prop. if you look around you can find sacs cheap. i think i paid 50.00 for my BG bag and 40.00 for my side sacs.
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