craze1cars
Lieutenant Commander
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2004
- Messages
- 1,822
Re: AERIAL wakeboard tower?
I think DIY Wake is another cheap brand very worthy of consideration. I just installed one on my 1999 Stingray 200LX last weekend, photos attached. Random thoughts and observations follow.
It seems plenty solid enough for a generic universal tower. Got their "Pro Swoop" and one Wakeboard rack delivered to my home for $749. Spent another $139 on Ebay for an Aerial waterski rack for the other side, since I didn't like the dimensions on the DIY wake waterski rack.
So I'm out exactly $888 for a tower and TWO racks, with shipping INCLUDED. I thought that was a pretty good price. Shipping was STUNNINGLY fast. It travelled from California to my home in Indiana exactly TWO days after I paid for it. Pleasant surprise.
Quality and install difficulty were pretty average. No heim joints, which is nice. I always thought heim joints look very unfinished with their tiny diameter and sometimes exposed threads and all. I figured out install no problem without having to call them or ask any questions. You know what they say...measure 8 times, and drill once! It seems solid and everything did go according to plan. As Stingrays are notoriously light boats with thin fiberglass and questionable build quality/strength, I definitely wanted to add backer boards behind the mounts to help spread the load, even though DIY Wake's instructions said the small aluminum brackets they provide are good enough. I feel better about overbuilding a bit. I used scrap 3/4" plywood, globbed it up solid with epoxy, then thru-bolted the brackets on as tight as possible before the epoxy set up so it would ooze out all over the place and fill the gaps. A pic of that is attached also. Even the thick 3/4" ply flexed enough to meet the very slight contour of the boat. If I had more of a curve to deal with, thinner ply would have been better. On the outside, the rubber pads on the DIY Wake feet seemed to compress enough to compensate for my VERY slight curve of the mount points, but they wouldn't compensate for very much of a curve at all. You need to have ALMOST a completely flat surface to mount this type of generic tower.
Overall I'm pleased. Got the Swoop design becuase I wanted full adjustability on height. By spreading the legs out wide I could set this up so I could still back my trailer into my garage without folding it down, which is about 9' 10" clearance at the door. And inside the boat the bar is about 6' 5" above the floor, so very few people would ever need to duck. I could set these legs any distance apart that I wanted to in order to get that exact height I needed with 1" of clearance. So I'm very happy to say I never should need to fold it down.
And that's a good thing. If you want an easy-to-fold tower, I don't think this one is for you...despite their advertising. You'd need a hex wrench (actually two...can you believe about 1/2 the fasteners in this kit were SAE, and the other half were metric? Wierd), and you'd need to completely remove 4 bolts, then loosen 4 more at pivot points in order for this to fold. No big deal, but not exactly a "pull the pin and drop it" type of thing. I tow to lake and ski 2 to 3 evenings or mornings per week all summer long, and then back it into my garage for storage after each session. That's a whole lot of bolting and unbolting in my situation. And most of the bolts are threaded into aluminum blocks. And after I got the bolts out I think my racks would probably be in the way and would need to come off. Another 4 bolts. After frequent and regular folding I could easily see stripped threads, lost bolts, stripped hex heads, scratched up tower legs, and creaky loose pivot/disconnect points in my future. So I'm VERY happy I was able to set this up for my normal storage routine and never need to fold it, so I can crank these bolts down TIGHT and never touch them again.
I've learned that polished aluminum towers will scratch when you look at them funny. Not the most durable finish at all. Luckily for me I don't care much about appearances on my old boat, and this tower is all about function. But I see multiple gouges and scratches in this tower's future. Already has a few small ones from the rigors of installation, and I haven't even had it on the water yet. If this bothers you, spring the extra cash for a stainless tower, or you can choose to be an annoyingly anal person and yell at everyone who touches or bumps your aluminum one.
I can report back about any creaking/squeaking/swaying after I run it sometime hopefully in the next few weeks. I don't expect any problems as I've been hanging and pulling and jumping on it and it is VERY tight and solid and quiet. But if bolts start to come loose, my backup plan is to just aluminum weld all these pivot joints together permanantly and forget the bolts. I have that ability and it might be worth the time to do so...but I'll only do it if something seems to want to move.
Yeah, it's probably a cheap China-built piece, but so what? Obviously "you get what you pay for," and I really think I got my $888 worth and not much more. I'm more than haappy to save a thousand bucks or two over the more expensive towers, which I'm sure are better quality, but overkill for my standards. The best part is that this cheapo tower & rack allowed me to buy Perfectpass Stargazer system in ADDITION to a tower and stay within my budget, rather than just buy an expensive tower and still have to fight the throttle war...
For anyone who decides to buy this brand, do yourself a huge favor and invest in a right-angle close-quarters drill. You'll need it to drill 8 square and straight holes from the inside of the double-overhead crossbars. About $35 for a junker at Harbor Freight tools, and will result in MUCH better build quality than using a normal drill, which will force you to drill angled holes. If that doesn't make sense, you'll see exactly what I mean when you get to this particular step...handy tool to have around anyway. That was the only bonus purchase I had to make to get this job done.
And my Stingray has a fairly narrow beam, like 76-ish inches I think. I had to cut about 6" off of the 4 legs to get it narrow enough to fit my boat. This situation is not unusual, and is explained in the instructions quite clearly. Aluminum legs cut pretty easy with a hacksaw, but I used an angle grinder with a cutoff wheel. The cut end is 100% hidden inside the crosspipe, so it doesn't need to be a pretty or clean or square cut, don't let this possibility intimidate you.
Oh yeah, the bungee cord setup on the racks kinda sucks (on both the Aerial and the DIY rack...bungee system is identical on them...heck, probably same chinese mfr...). They're good for holding ONE board in place, but when you put two boards on one rack, the bottom board (and ski) doesn't get held very securely by the bungee. It can't fall out, but I'm certain it will wobble and move and shift when I hit waves. I may need to add some bungees or straps of some type, but that shouldn't be very hard to engineer...
One final note about the racks, since I have one of each brand. While the Aerial waterski rack I bought is very nice overall, the universal clamp for the rack SUCKS. They give you a big universal 2.5" clamp and a whole bunch of rubber spacers for different diameter tubing. Since my legs are 2" in diameter, I have to put in the 1/4" rubber spacer to fill the gap. When this is tightened down, the whole rack wobbles and springs around on the rubber. So I went to the next size up on the rubber spacer which is 5/16" and crammed it in there and tightened it down. I was able to compress the rubber enough that the wobble is mostly gone, but it looks like CRAP because the rubber is oozing out of gaps all over the place. DIY Wake's rack clamp, in comparison, is all metal, with no rubber spacer, custom made for 2" pipe. It looks great and is 100% solid. So let me repeat this again: Aerial's universal rack clamp SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS. So I will probably order a DIY Wake or Krypt 2" clamp to replace the Aerial clamp, which will be another $35-ish investment, so not a big deal. I first want to verify the bolt pattern is the same between these brands and I believe it is.
Unrelated note. This is my "pawn shop" boat. Purchased last fall from a pawn shop very cheap, due to fully disclosed cracked engine block (5.0L Volvo) which I intended to swap out over the winter for a 5.7. I was pleasantly surprised to find the crack to be external only...JB WELD! And after I trouble-shot the boat myself I discovered it only was a non-runner due to a bad connection inside the electric fuel pump (which I rebuilt myself for FREE), and after testing compression and leakdown I discovered this engine itself is internally solid as a rock! So the engine replacement budget shifted quickly to tower & Perfectpass!!! Yay! After wetsanding, minor upholstery repairs, new decals, a comprehensive tune-up, a few minor mechanical repairs, a new 4 blade stainless prop, and a whole bunch of time and elbow grease, I built myself a VERY nice wakeboarding/skiing/cruising machine that runs PERFECT, rips out of the hole like a bat out of hell and tops out at 57 mph GPS!! Out of a 20.3 foot runabout with a 220 HP 5.0L 2bbl! I was shocked at the speed since most 20 ft runabouts with this powerplant are doing good to see speeds in the mid to high 40's. So I gotta give it up to Stingray for building an incredibly fast boat out of lower HP motors, though you pay a price in thinner fiberglass and the associated flexing, and a bit of a rough ride in the chop due to their hull design. But as a watersports guy I purposely avoid choppy times and generally only go out when the water is smoooooth, so it works well as a wakeboard boat. With trim down most of the way the wake is large, smooth, and BEAUTIFUL in the 18 to 24 mph range, with no ballast seeming to be necessary. And when I get it up to 30 the wake shrinks down very nicely for a pretty easy run thru the slalom course. So my rig is now fully equipped with all the most helpful wakeboarding/skiing toys...tower and GPS Perfectpass, and I'm out of pocket a bit less than $7K total for price of boat and all repairs/accessories.
Though I'm sure it's not as great as a true wakeboard boat for that particular purpose, I did it for under $7K. And I kept the option to cruise fuel-efficiently and comfortably, go fast as hell when I want to, trim up and motor freely into the shallows to beach the boat, or to go fishing in the stump fields, etc. And those are all the things those expensive inboards and V-drives simply cannot do. And it looks great condition-wise, like it's about 2 years old now. I'm very very pleased overall. It's certainly a fantastic upgrade to the 1992 3.0L 18ft Rinker I replaced...
Sorry pics aren't the best as I didn't feel like pulling it outside just for a photo shoot. I think you get the idea though...
I think DIY Wake is another cheap brand very worthy of consideration. I just installed one on my 1999 Stingray 200LX last weekend, photos attached. Random thoughts and observations follow.
It seems plenty solid enough for a generic universal tower. Got their "Pro Swoop" and one Wakeboard rack delivered to my home for $749. Spent another $139 on Ebay for an Aerial waterski rack for the other side, since I didn't like the dimensions on the DIY wake waterski rack.
So I'm out exactly $888 for a tower and TWO racks, with shipping INCLUDED. I thought that was a pretty good price. Shipping was STUNNINGLY fast. It travelled from California to my home in Indiana exactly TWO days after I paid for it. Pleasant surprise.
Quality and install difficulty were pretty average. No heim joints, which is nice. I always thought heim joints look very unfinished with their tiny diameter and sometimes exposed threads and all. I figured out install no problem without having to call them or ask any questions. You know what they say...measure 8 times, and drill once! It seems solid and everything did go according to plan. As Stingrays are notoriously light boats with thin fiberglass and questionable build quality/strength, I definitely wanted to add backer boards behind the mounts to help spread the load, even though DIY Wake's instructions said the small aluminum brackets they provide are good enough. I feel better about overbuilding a bit. I used scrap 3/4" plywood, globbed it up solid with epoxy, then thru-bolted the brackets on as tight as possible before the epoxy set up so it would ooze out all over the place and fill the gaps. A pic of that is attached also. Even the thick 3/4" ply flexed enough to meet the very slight contour of the boat. If I had more of a curve to deal with, thinner ply would have been better. On the outside, the rubber pads on the DIY Wake feet seemed to compress enough to compensate for my VERY slight curve of the mount points, but they wouldn't compensate for very much of a curve at all. You need to have ALMOST a completely flat surface to mount this type of generic tower.
Overall I'm pleased. Got the Swoop design becuase I wanted full adjustability on height. By spreading the legs out wide I could set this up so I could still back my trailer into my garage without folding it down, which is about 9' 10" clearance at the door. And inside the boat the bar is about 6' 5" above the floor, so very few people would ever need to duck. I could set these legs any distance apart that I wanted to in order to get that exact height I needed with 1" of clearance. So I'm very happy to say I never should need to fold it down.
And that's a good thing. If you want an easy-to-fold tower, I don't think this one is for you...despite their advertising. You'd need a hex wrench (actually two...can you believe about 1/2 the fasteners in this kit were SAE, and the other half were metric? Wierd), and you'd need to completely remove 4 bolts, then loosen 4 more at pivot points in order for this to fold. No big deal, but not exactly a "pull the pin and drop it" type of thing. I tow to lake and ski 2 to 3 evenings or mornings per week all summer long, and then back it into my garage for storage after each session. That's a whole lot of bolting and unbolting in my situation. And most of the bolts are threaded into aluminum blocks. And after I got the bolts out I think my racks would probably be in the way and would need to come off. Another 4 bolts. After frequent and regular folding I could easily see stripped threads, lost bolts, stripped hex heads, scratched up tower legs, and creaky loose pivot/disconnect points in my future. So I'm VERY happy I was able to set this up for my normal storage routine and never need to fold it, so I can crank these bolts down TIGHT and never touch them again.
I've learned that polished aluminum towers will scratch when you look at them funny. Not the most durable finish at all. Luckily for me I don't care much about appearances on my old boat, and this tower is all about function. But I see multiple gouges and scratches in this tower's future. Already has a few small ones from the rigors of installation, and I haven't even had it on the water yet. If this bothers you, spring the extra cash for a stainless tower, or you can choose to be an annoyingly anal person and yell at everyone who touches or bumps your aluminum one.
I can report back about any creaking/squeaking/swaying after I run it sometime hopefully in the next few weeks. I don't expect any problems as I've been hanging and pulling and jumping on it and it is VERY tight and solid and quiet. But if bolts start to come loose, my backup plan is to just aluminum weld all these pivot joints together permanantly and forget the bolts. I have that ability and it might be worth the time to do so...but I'll only do it if something seems to want to move.
Yeah, it's probably a cheap China-built piece, but so what? Obviously "you get what you pay for," and I really think I got my $888 worth and not much more. I'm more than haappy to save a thousand bucks or two over the more expensive towers, which I'm sure are better quality, but overkill for my standards. The best part is that this cheapo tower & rack allowed me to buy Perfectpass Stargazer system in ADDITION to a tower and stay within my budget, rather than just buy an expensive tower and still have to fight the throttle war...
For anyone who decides to buy this brand, do yourself a huge favor and invest in a right-angle close-quarters drill. You'll need it to drill 8 square and straight holes from the inside of the double-overhead crossbars. About $35 for a junker at Harbor Freight tools, and will result in MUCH better build quality than using a normal drill, which will force you to drill angled holes. If that doesn't make sense, you'll see exactly what I mean when you get to this particular step...handy tool to have around anyway. That was the only bonus purchase I had to make to get this job done.
And my Stingray has a fairly narrow beam, like 76-ish inches I think. I had to cut about 6" off of the 4 legs to get it narrow enough to fit my boat. This situation is not unusual, and is explained in the instructions quite clearly. Aluminum legs cut pretty easy with a hacksaw, but I used an angle grinder with a cutoff wheel. The cut end is 100% hidden inside the crosspipe, so it doesn't need to be a pretty or clean or square cut, don't let this possibility intimidate you.
Oh yeah, the bungee cord setup on the racks kinda sucks (on both the Aerial and the DIY rack...bungee system is identical on them...heck, probably same chinese mfr...). They're good for holding ONE board in place, but when you put two boards on one rack, the bottom board (and ski) doesn't get held very securely by the bungee. It can't fall out, but I'm certain it will wobble and move and shift when I hit waves. I may need to add some bungees or straps of some type, but that shouldn't be very hard to engineer...
One final note about the racks, since I have one of each brand. While the Aerial waterski rack I bought is very nice overall, the universal clamp for the rack SUCKS. They give you a big universal 2.5" clamp and a whole bunch of rubber spacers for different diameter tubing. Since my legs are 2" in diameter, I have to put in the 1/4" rubber spacer to fill the gap. When this is tightened down, the whole rack wobbles and springs around on the rubber. So I went to the next size up on the rubber spacer which is 5/16" and crammed it in there and tightened it down. I was able to compress the rubber enough that the wobble is mostly gone, but it looks like CRAP because the rubber is oozing out of gaps all over the place. DIY Wake's rack clamp, in comparison, is all metal, with no rubber spacer, custom made for 2" pipe. It looks great and is 100% solid. So let me repeat this again: Aerial's universal rack clamp SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS. So I will probably order a DIY Wake or Krypt 2" clamp to replace the Aerial clamp, which will be another $35-ish investment, so not a big deal. I first want to verify the bolt pattern is the same between these brands and I believe it is.
Unrelated note. This is my "pawn shop" boat. Purchased last fall from a pawn shop very cheap, due to fully disclosed cracked engine block (5.0L Volvo) which I intended to swap out over the winter for a 5.7. I was pleasantly surprised to find the crack to be external only...JB WELD! And after I trouble-shot the boat myself I discovered it only was a non-runner due to a bad connection inside the electric fuel pump (which I rebuilt myself for FREE), and after testing compression and leakdown I discovered this engine itself is internally solid as a rock! So the engine replacement budget shifted quickly to tower & Perfectpass!!! Yay! After wetsanding, minor upholstery repairs, new decals, a comprehensive tune-up, a few minor mechanical repairs, a new 4 blade stainless prop, and a whole bunch of time and elbow grease, I built myself a VERY nice wakeboarding/skiing/cruising machine that runs PERFECT, rips out of the hole like a bat out of hell and tops out at 57 mph GPS!! Out of a 20.3 foot runabout with a 220 HP 5.0L 2bbl! I was shocked at the speed since most 20 ft runabouts with this powerplant are doing good to see speeds in the mid to high 40's. So I gotta give it up to Stingray for building an incredibly fast boat out of lower HP motors, though you pay a price in thinner fiberglass and the associated flexing, and a bit of a rough ride in the chop due to their hull design. But as a watersports guy I purposely avoid choppy times and generally only go out when the water is smoooooth, so it works well as a wakeboard boat. With trim down most of the way the wake is large, smooth, and BEAUTIFUL in the 18 to 24 mph range, with no ballast seeming to be necessary. And when I get it up to 30 the wake shrinks down very nicely for a pretty easy run thru the slalom course. So my rig is now fully equipped with all the most helpful wakeboarding/skiing toys...tower and GPS Perfectpass, and I'm out of pocket a bit less than $7K total for price of boat and all repairs/accessories.
Though I'm sure it's not as great as a true wakeboard boat for that particular purpose, I did it for under $7K. And I kept the option to cruise fuel-efficiently and comfortably, go fast as hell when I want to, trim up and motor freely into the shallows to beach the boat, or to go fishing in the stump fields, etc. And those are all the things those expensive inboards and V-drives simply cannot do. And it looks great condition-wise, like it's about 2 years old now. I'm very very pleased overall. It's certainly a fantastic upgrade to the 1992 3.0L 18ft Rinker I replaced...
Sorry pics aren't the best as I didn't feel like pulling it outside just for a photo shoot. I think you get the idea though...
