Here’s what my “thunderboat” looks like now

[Bob English]

Here is a idea for more air flow. I have done this on a few of my sport hydro's. Get these vents that you can find in all shapes and sizes and install them in the hull or cowling. The guys that fly big r.c. airplanes use them a lot. That is where I get mine from. Just look a airplane parts suppliers for them. They do what they are designed to do. Get the air flowing through the hull. But one of the things I also like about them is they let the water out of a hull sitting dead in the water. You know what it is like, you stuff the boat of kill the engine and it sits out there in the water until you can get out there and pick it up in the retrieve boat. You go to pick up your boat and it is full of water and weighs 25 or more pounds. This way when I pick mine up the water flows out the vent pretty fast and not in the hull when you are dealing with a dead in the water boat.

 

[Rich Jones]

Hey osracer
I looked at the insane setup, and I see what you are talking about. The one thing that I notice is that there are no holes in the rear of the boat to setup a flow of air through the hull for cooling. So the air goes in those big gaps in the front, but it can’t escape out the back. One of the things that has me hesitating to cut out my instrument panel is the thought that I may set up a poor air flow……air comes in the front of the cowling, and then exits out of the instrument panel, and short circuits the tuned pipe, which I would think generates the most amount of heat in the hull. What do you think?

Here’s what I did to cover up the holes. I think they look cool. They come in your basic aluminum color but I painted these with flat black auto primer. I got them from Esprit Model. They specialize in RC sailplanes. They are on the web. You have to get the heat generated by the tuned pipe out of the engine compartment. I also have an opening below the instrument panel in the cockpit which allows heat to escape. For air in the front, one of the things you could do is open up that spark plug hole some. That’ll let some air in. Then a couple of holes in the front of the cowl or cowl deck should do the trick.

 

[Ray Sametz]