Modifications / Tuning Tips
If you have just bought your model, you may not have noticed just yet but she can spin out on the corners and chine walk into next week - if you've got it going fast enough!

This can be most off-putting, although it does keep you awake.

Fear not, there is a cure - and they are known as Speed Rails. They are used to aid release of the water and redirect flow. We've just taken them one step further and made the model (and the RaceBoat) faster and more stable, and yes that includes better cornering. If you want to know how, read on.

Speed Rails
If you have any other problems, or better still ideas, then please share them with me.
I am hoping that some of the ideas may be useful in our ongoing development of the RaceBoat. Being involved in racing I realise that it may be your own mods that keep you ahead of the pack, so I promise that if requested I will not share your tips with others without your consent.

Speed rails added to the bottom of your hull in the right areas help with lift and control, add speed and aid stability in the corners. There is nothing very clever about them - apart from the positioning and the combination of sizes and positions!
The rails on the model were formed using standard car body filler and about 10% yellow gellcoat, to add color and strength.
First we abraded the out side horizontal surface of the chine to about 6mm of the edge.
After covering two hacksaw blades with masking tape to aid their release they were taped to the edge of the chine then back filled with the catalyzed filler mix.



The hacksaw blades were then taped vertically..



and a 13mm drillbit was drawn along to form the curve.



The hacksaw blades are then released, and the ends of each rail shaped to a slope on the leading edge, and a vertical straight on the trailing edge. Remove the excess filler and the resulting perfectly formed rails are cleaned up leaving them looking like this.



Ventilated Steps
In the photos below you will see the rails in pink filler. Note also the small hole in the back of the step most visible in the second picture. This is the step vent and is basically as big a bore pipe as you can fit through a hole in the vertical face of the step without going too far around the curve into the flat behind, or interfering with the trailing edge of the running surface.

This pipe then has to be fed up through the deck preferably with some sort of scoop to aid airflow. With the steps vented in this way we have found that she will get onto the plane faster and behave better at high speed.





In the last picture you can see the rails on the full sized RaceBoat, they are not scaled to the ones on the model because we have to conform to some very strange and convoluted rules.



They work very well. We also know that the larger size rails more in keeping with the size of those on the model work better in some ways - because some idiot read the rulebook wrong and built the first ones too big!