Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

Anybody added lifting stakes to pontoons anyone have pics of how and where

53POWELL wrote:Anybody added lifting stakes to pontoons anyone have pics of how and where

If you do a search for "LIFTING STRAKES" you will find good info on this subject. There have been a few threads recently and some older ones as well.

Thank you very much 53

Unless I was a very experienced welder-fabricator, I'd not put strakes on an older boat.

I'd want factory OEM built strakes only--and 150 hp motor. Manufacturers have spent a lot of time engineering strakes for their specific boats.

I agree

There not rocket science, you could use 4" alum angle and welded it so the bottom is parrelle to the bottom of the water.

I will say this on a 24' boat you will need a good 150-200hp motor to see the effects, A tri toon helps with this also, they key is you need to get the front of the boat up in order to get the lifting effects of them.

A good welder and attaching them is no big deal, I tig welded mine on and have no leakes the first time around. TIG takes a longer but you have more control over the welds, but just about all pontoon are made with MIG(wife feed).

turbom700 wrote:There not rocket science, you could use 4" alum angle and welded it so the bottom is parrelle to the bottom of the water.

I will say this on a 24' boat you will need a good 150-200hp motor to see the effects, A tri toon helps with this also, they key is you need to get the front of the boat up in order to get the lifting effects of them.

A good welder and attaching them is no big deal, I tig welded mine on and have no leakes the first time around. TIG takes a longer but you have more control over the welds, but just about all pontoon are made with MIG(wife feed).

Do you have photos of your strakes?

I added a strake (to a log that already had one strake on it), and turned the whole thing into the center toon. The quotes I received on the aluminum welding where, in my opinion, ridiculous. So, I bought a tig welder and practiced a bit. Then took my first bite out of the proverbial elephant. If you saw my welds you would definitely relate them to an amateur, and in the end I ended up with two pin holes on the inside of the strake. I "patched" the pin holes and have had no water intrusion (that I can tell). I am still working on getting the "new to me" engine to perform. With a 70 HP, pushing my 22' tritoon I can get 19mph. Not enough to see any kind of performance increase with strakes. I have since put on a 150hp but I am having trouble getting it to run correctly (fastest it has gone is 22 at 3800 rpm). Here is the title of my rebuild "1988 Bass Buggy winter/Gravity project in New Mexico".
Not sure I can be of much help answering any questions, but I would be happy to try

Luke wrote:

turbom700 wrote:There not rocket science, you could use 4" alum angle and welded it so the bottom is parrelle to the bottom of the water.

I will say this on a 24' boat you will need a good 150-200hp motor to see the effects, A tri toon helps with this also, they key is you need to get the front of the boat up in order to get the lifting effects of them.

A good welder and attaching them is no big deal, I tig welded mine on and have no leakes the first time around. TIG takes a longer but you have more control over the welds, but just about all pontoon are made with MIG(wife feed).

Do you have photos of your strakes?

Here is mine as they sit right now. Keep in mind these were done 4yrs ago before I had much knowledge on strake design. They work good once the bow of the boat is up they dont work the best at getting the bow up. This is where a L type strake comes into play. This fall the boat is getting torn and down and I'm going to more of a L type strake inside and out.



This little bugger right here gave me almost 10mph on the boat. Since my center toon only goes from the bow back 6ft(for now) I didnt have enough lift to get the strakes to work. Now the boat shots up to 18mph then I can start trimming the motor and you can feel the bow riser strakes take over and she climbs to 28mph. This is with a 140hp mercruiser.

turbom700 wrote:This little bugger right here gave me almost 10mph on the boat. Since my center toon only goes from the bow back 6ft(for now) I didnt have enough lift to get the strakes to work. Now the boat shots up to 18mph then I can start trimming the motor and you can feel the bow riser strakes take over and she climbs to 28mph. This is with a 140hp mercruiser.

That must be wicked in reverse!

Never noticed it being an issue, then again I'm not doing more then a few mph in reverse.

I thought about putting a trim tap on the front that I could acutate up and down but in the end I need to make one big center toon.