land & sea stern jack

[check88]

the brother in law has decided to install one of these stern jacks on his 19' checkmate,454 mag,alpha1.the reason for doing this is to try and improve the horrible rough water ride that is inherent in this hull design.has anyone tried one of these on a similar sized hull?did it improve the ride?i know that on outboard boats a jack plate can sometimes improve ride by rebalancing the hull.would this be the case with a stern jack?any tips or suggestions are welcomed.

[Instigator]

One of the test boats that L/S used was a 19' Mate w/a 260 and (tested in Trailer Boat Magazine) they claimed increase from 59 to 66 MPH's! Be carefull though, another magazine did a test which showed a slight decrease in performance, and it was a hell of a lot harder to install than it looked. They actually recommeneded having your dealer do it. Another concern for me would be running the big block Mag through an Alpha drive! From what I've seen, if you beat em its not a question of its gonna break, but when! I may still have those articles around. If you want em e-mail me and I'll try and dig em out and see if I can figure my $20. scanner out??? Hope this helps, Instigator (gwilli3@columbus.rr.com)

[check88]

yeah the boat is an 87 but it looks brand new-the brother in law is kinda anal about washin and waxin it every time before he takes it out.had real low (about 40)hours on it when he bought it 2 years ago.the u joints are startin to clunk so he figured as long as he had it apart he would do the jack too.i told him it probably was not as easy as l&s said it was to install one.everyone of the dealers he's talked to said he would be better off switching to a bravo and forgetting the stern jack.that's pretty much what i'm thinking too at this point.

[Techno]

I think it was family and performance boating or hot boating did a test recently. It turned out that the boat already had a high X dimension so the stern jack didn't really do anything. They did say that it was fairly easy to do although they did recieve an incorrectly machined part. There is a money back garrantee if the speed isn't increased 10%.

The stern jack isn't rebalancing anything. It's purpose is to mimic jacking the prop up and out. By moving it further to the rear when you trim + you gain height from the arc it swings in and the prop is working on a longer lever arm. This is supposed to give more speed.

This may sound wierd but he might be going too slow. I used to be able to get through pretty rough water for my boat but only if I was going fast enough. Other boats similar to mine would be plowing and pounding. The waves had to be close enough together and regular for this to work