**Disclaimer, I know this is an Allison sub-forum, this is not intended to be a knock on Allison. Hopefully you all know by now that I'm data driven and I just like making real world unbiased comparisons of boat performance data. Allison is the comparison boat because I spent 5 years of my life working on with some of the fastest Allison XB21 guys around collecting data on various motors and boats in the pursuit of making my boat as quick and fast as it could be. I have a lot of data on the XB21 to compare against.
I finally got the boat up and running. I had a few hours in before the gearcase let loose. Only one testing day, the rest was getting the boat ready for the tournament season. I ended up getting the bare hull the week before the season started. I took the week off and completely rigged the boat. Each day started around 6am and ended around midnight to 2 am. I was pretty exhausted by the end. In addition to the gearcase issue I ran into an issue with a faulty spark plug wire and bad plug that took way too much time to diagnose and find. I pretty much lost the summer, but now its running and I'm trying to squeeze a bunch of testing in before we have ice up here.
Here are a few videos.
The first group of videos was to partially duplicate a test I had done on the XB21 300R 1.75 Prosport to see how fast the boat could hit 90. With the Allison I used a 28 Promax. The first video below is the Allison XB21 and the Second video is the LCB 450R 1.6 running a 26 Maximus. The 28 on the Allison topped out at 90, the 26 on the LCB tops out at 94 (listen to the supercharger in the LCB video, it is bad ass). The Allison pass is the quickest the boat had ever run for me, I was testing my race setup and wanted to know what the boat could do for a 1000ft radar race we run up here. For the test I pulled the troller from the nose, and removed my tackle. I left the lithium troller battery in the nose. From a 5mph idle the Allison ran the 1000' in 14.43s and 84mph. The LCB loaded to fish with 30 gallons of gas, tackle, and a troller on the nose ran 1000' in 13.5s at 80mph. A slower top speed but first to the line. The Allison by comparison is 104ft behind the LCB at 1000ft. Pretty incredible for the size of the boat. I can't wait to duplicate the test with no troller and without the gear weight. For this test, the LCB was 500lbs heavier than the Allison.
The next group of videos was done with the 450R just off of break in and the first time I opened it up. The 5-105 pass was the very first time I had driven the boat over 90. I only made one hard acceleration pass like this. The top speed pass was a rolling start pass. I made 3 attempts at a number, the first two passes ran 105 and some change.
Back to the data side. Running 105 in the Allison was no easy feat. Getting a solid 5-105 pass took a lot of work and special props. I only had two props that would do it in one hard acceleration blast. Again, this test starts at an idle and ends at 105. You have no time to feel things out. You get a perfect boat set and you ride it out. I have had some quick boats in my day, wrangling the XB21 into running 105 without running it out for a mile and feeling it out was a challenge. The best 5-105 passes I ever made with a tournament ready boat was with the Mercury 32P 5 Blade CNC in 33.2s and 3440ft and the 34 P4 BC in 37.7s and 4062ft. The LCB went 105 with the 34P4 BC in 32.4s and 3333ft on its first and only test pass. So 1 sec quicker than the Allison and in 110ft less. If you compare it apples to apples and use the same prop that is 5 seconds quicker and in 730 fewer feet. Looking at the Allison data the boat really slowed down after 100. At 3000ft the pack is close and all running 100 to 103. The Allison with the Cleaver is 18ft behind the LCB and running identical speeds and the Allison P4 is 60ft behind, the LCB just is just pulling harder in the mid-100's.
The logical next question is has the boat went faster than this video yet? The answer is no. I lost the lower unit at the beginning of June and got it back at the end of July, then I had the spark plug issue (which I actually felt and drove through in the filming of this video). I spent a month trying to fix what we thought was a fuel issue, when that had exhausted itself and everything had been replaced multiple times I went hunting for other possibilities. This issue really limited top speed testing. Now that I'm good to go I'm fighting water pressure issues. I added a transom water pickup and I'm slowly testing and fixing all the issues with running that setup. I have another week to get that all figured out before my props are done being tweaked. Hopefully in a two weeks the pickup issues will be resolved and my fast props will be back. I have 32 Hill Cleaver and a 32 Mercury Maximus that are getting some tweaks for the setup. I also have the 2 P4's from my Allison that should be strong runners as well. I played around with the 32 P3 (Quickest 5-100mph prop I ever tested on my XB21-below) but the LCB cannot get it out of the hole easily (over the hub slip issue) and the prop isn't stable over 103 on this boat.
If you have read all the way to the end you are probably wondering what would and Allison XB21 with a 450R on it do? Well we are about to find out. Hopefully at the end of the month we will be on the water making comparison tests with these two boats. Tim has been putting in a lot of work to get the XB21 450R (Hulk) boat setup, we should be in a good place with both boats to let them eat!
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