Internal ballast system in a direct drive??

[phenom_1819]

Okay, so I've been dreaming about this for a while.  Does anybody know how much space there is between the hull and the floorboards, on the outside of the stringers?

I really would LOVE to drop a couple soft-sacks and an automatic ballast system into my X22, but don't know if there's even enough space down there.  I think you can get custom round LONG tube sacks that you could stuff down there, assuming there's enough space?

Anybody have any insight into this?

As far as where to drop them in, I can think of two places where holes could be cut that wound not be noticable: beneath the driver seat on the driver side, and the bottom of the ice chest on the passenger side.

[cyclone]

I'd betcha that that space is filled with flotation foam. You would have to destroy your boat to open up that space. I have an automated bag in the trunk, and I would add a couple three four hundred pounds up front, but I worry about the sacks overfilling and cracking fiberglass. I have auto ballast off the factory dash switches in the trunk and a manuel bag for the walk through.

[toyotafreak]

Cal, we need to get drawings, etc. covering what's under there. If I rememebr correctly the SX wet floor is like 600 pounds. Good, helpfull, but worth the risk? Yet another reason it'd be cool to borrow somebody's molds and do a boat up right (wet floor, wet gunnels; design the spaces with ballast in mind.)

[cyclone]

Yep, we oughta start from scratch. You are an ambitious do it yourself dude, Derek.

I say we start marinizing 4.7 liter Toyota truck motors, bump the compression and put better cams in, if needed. No supercharger, to much hassle. DISPLACEMENT is the key to torque happiness.

Buy a tits up boat company with a decent v bow inboard design, tweak the hull for best wake performance. PP,  integrated ballast, lots of HQ off the shelf hardware for simplicities sake.

With gas prices what they are, Toyota could tool up again with a new marketing plan.  They could sell a lotta boats if they weren't blockheaded about it, they need to understand the inboard market.

I have that domain parked for you, lemme know what you wanna do with it. Me and/or Lesman would help you get a site running. When the time rolls around,  I'll let it expire and tell you when so you can snag it. You don't need to host on my provider, there are cheaper ones out there. The more the merrier as far as Toyota boat fan sites go!!!

[toyotafreak]

Pete's talking dirty to me ;-)

Have you seen that the '05 Tundra and Sequoia are coming with VVT-i? Adds something like 30HP.

Trust me, if I were gonna do it, the engine would be small and blown, intercooled with lake water and equipped from the rods up for it. Volumetric EFFICIENCY is what blowing's all about, and EFFICIENCY is one of the things we love about our boats. 4.7L is still 'small' so it fits the bill. I would still very much like to see them do an aluminum 4.7L, but...why would they when the 5.5L's coming out soon?