Looking for Advice on my 01 Utopia 185

[JeromeM]

Hi all,

Been a really weird winter up here in Toronto Canada let me tell you! Anyways, anxious for spring and planning our summer and I have some decisions to make on the boat.

It's an 01 Utopia 185 with the 200hp Direct Injection engine. Last year it spent most of the summer parked not running properly until I finally found out it was a air injector which I replaced and is now running much better.

Here's our issue, we find that we are using the boat pretty much only for wakeboarding, no one is a pro, or will be pro but we would like a wake tower and bigger wake. Last year I tried ballast bags and it didn't work well at all, found the boat really hard to drive, it was either too slow with huge wake or too fast with no wake there was no happy medium so I returned the bags.

This year I would like to add a tower, new impeller, wear ring, intake grate, hydro turf, needs new cover etc.

Do you do all of these things to a boat that is very expensive to fix (engine wise) or do you sell it and get a little bit newer boat with a better engine like the 4-tec?

Thoughts?

 

[rookie101]

I own pretty much the same boat as you and it works great for towing my younger nieces and nephews wake-boarding, but if I was serious about the sport I would probably look at something different. Look at one of the newer twin engine 4tecs or an inboard V8 powered tournament boat.

Aaron

 

[Craigmri]

Trying to do something its not

The inherent hull design and weight of a jet boat makes it have less wake. That is a great feature unless you want wake. Trying ballast bags and the like I imagine would be marginally effective. Your fighting the Hull design and just sacrificing performance.

We had the wake tower on our Challenger 180 and it was fun no doubt to wakeboard behind and I'll say it put out a really nice wake if your just learning. Once we got the hang of jumping we started to want more wake. My brother has a Hurricane deckboat and man his boat puts off twice(at least) the size wake as our Challenger 180 did. I was shocked and even though he doesnt have a tower(has a pop-up pylon), we would get incredible air as we could launch off the wake.

If your satisfied with the wake your boat puts out, then a tower will add to your enjoyment but if your not save your money and buy a stern drive. The weight of the motor in the stern will put off a fantastic wake at about 18 MPH.

Craig