Teufelsrochen, aircooled flatbottom speedboat

Hello fellow buccaneers,

As implied in the title, I'm planning on building an aircooled flatbottom speedboat. Something along the lines of the all-american v-8 powered, v-drive hotboats, only suited to travel on lakes during good weather. Only, it will be much smaller, much more the way we eurotrash think.

It will be powered by a vw beetle engine, which is a flat four aircooled engine. The upside of using this engine is the lack of the dreaded watercooling systems, dreaded by me that is and the wide availability of quite cheap performance parts. And as an added bonus, it will look good, sitting exposed to all who's passing me by, not!

The engine will be coupled to a V-drive. For the "prototype" I've got one laying around that will take up to 74 hp ( european, real hp that is ). And if everything works out I plan to buy a beefier one that can take up to 300 hp, which is around as much as i'll be able to pour out of a highly tweaked vw engine.

I've already posted much of the same story under another topic, but will use this one to update on the progress of my lakesboat, which can be rather slow at times, what with my job and the building of my own houseboat.

If any one of you would like to comment be it negative or positive, feel free to do so, as it will only improve the final result.

Thanks,
Tim

 

This is my previous topic : http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?t=6128

the problem there is solved as I've located the V-drive to use instead of an ordinary car gearbox.

 

If you're going to crank 300HP from a VW, you had better have PLENTY of replacement parts. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of aircooled engines in boats. But VW engines tend to grenade in direct relationship to the HP they put out. Eight times stock is pushing the envelope. Still, you probably already know this. I wish you luck...

 

The 300 hp will occur between 7,000 and 7, 300 rpm, ONLY. The G M V8 will tow you to 7,000 rpm's and release you for the rest of the speed run.