Hyperryd

A good friend of mine wanted to upgrade the sound system in his Avalanche. The original equipment was pretty much worn out by the previous owner and all needed to be replaced, so we gutted it and started fresh. The stock subwoofer enclosure is built into the floor of the boat and isn't really sealed. I spent a bunch of time spraying expandable foam and undercoating to try to seal it up and deaden the sound and improve the enclosure. The best bet would have been to cut it out and build a proper box, but that wasn't in the scope of this rebuild. I installed a Polk Momo 12" sub and grille. The stock highs and mids are mounted at floor level which is horrible acoustically. I decided to get them up where you could hear them. That is a challenge in this boat. I installed a set of Polk 6 1/2" separates in the observer dash and installed the midrange of the right side separates in the walkway facing the driver. I installed the tweeter of that set of separates to the right of the driver by the dash. I would have preferred to install the mid on the same plane as the tweeter, but this configuration works well for boats that don't have any good places to place a mid near the driver. You don't get the perfect stereo separation, but you get great sound with plenty of volume for the driver while driving. The mids in the rest of the cabin were even more work. I built HDPE enclosures on each side that went in the drink holder cubbies. Since I was already building the enclosures, I went ahead and installed dual USB chargers in them. Getting all of the speakers up in the boat massively improved the sound in the cabin and chargers are in great positions. We didn't do anything in the bow to have a "quiet" zone. For the music source I added a JL Audio Bluetooth receiver and a Clarion EQ. The receiver went in the right side of the dash, next to the throttle control to make it easy to control while driving. I fabricated the EQ plate out of 1/4" HDPE and made room for the 3 surf system controls. Oh by the way we added surf system to the boat at the same time. Since the stock speaker locations were just holes at the floor now I put in Polk Audio white speaker grills with LEDs where the tweeters went. This allows the storage to breath and made for perfect LED locations around the interior. For the tower I installed four Polk Audio 6 1/2" speakers in Kicker pods. These worked out great being short and wide on the tower. There is plenty of headroom in the middle of the boat. Last but not least I built an HDPE amp rack for a Polk 900w five channel amp for the in boats & sub and a Polk 500w two channel amp for the tower speakers. The Promariner onboard charger keeps both batteries charged and ready to go. I extended the plug to the rear walk through. It is easy to just reach over the side and plug it in. Overall it is a great system on a reasonable budget!! It fit my buddy's needs perfectly. I forgot to get good pics of the surf system when we finished it, but here are a couple during the install.

Since my music is fed via Bluetooth to my system, I found that I was putting our iPhones and iPads at risk around the boat and at the dash last summer. I thought about it and I would rather risk an inexpensive Android tablet than a $700 phone. I also wanted to be able to preview and start/stop my GoPro mounted at various spots around the boat, from the driver's seat. I modified a dash mounted tablet clamp by cutting off the top clamp and about 3/4" of the bracket itself. I wanted the tablet mounted lower than the bracket was designed to clamp. I used the lower part of the clamp to carry the weight and industrial strength Velcro to hold the tablet in place. It is very sturdy in place and yet easy to grab and use around the boat when parked. I am going to drill a hole behind the bracket to run a coiled up power cord for it so it will last all day. I store all of my music on the tablet and use the GoPro app to see what the camera sees. I actually used a ridiculously cheap $50 tablet that was long and narrow, just to try on this. I have used it at work all winter to stream music and it works great. I think this will work out great this summer and if it gets wet I'll just grab another cheap tablet while I keep my expensive phones tucked away.

I purchased a 2002 Centurion from a good friend a couple of years ago. I knew the boat well and knew he took great care of it mechanically. It only had 270 hours on a 10 year old boat that had been stored in a garage it’s whole life. My only issue was it was a yellow and white boat, and I mean yellow. I don’t mind yellow as an accent color, but it was way too much for my tastes. The other issue was the stereo. I love large systems and it had a lot of equipment, but it was getting tired and there was no storage. So I gave it a makeover. First off I tinted the windshield to give some black to break up the yellow a bit. It helped, but it needed more. So I had it wrapped from the rail down the sides in satin black and had a nice version of the Centurion logo put on the side. I also had the speaker box covered and added the logo as well. Now we were talking. The satin black swallowed light and made the remaining yellow just pop off the boat. Now that the cosmetics were in order I moved to the stereo. It had some older Rockford Fosgate amps that worked great, but were mounted in a way that took all of the storage room in the boat. They were also different colors of gray/black. I pulled them out, spent 6 months chasing factory bridges and caps to form one long amplifier. I painted them yellow and sanded the faces to expose the aluminum edges. Rather than put two more RF logos on the bridges, I added a Volt meter and a temp gauge for the highs amp that gets the hottest. They were yellow LEDs so they looked great on the amps. I then rewired the system to move the amps to the side of the boat where I epoxied a board with stainless tee nuts. I then built another plastic board to mount the amps to and then mounted that board to the one on the side of the boat. It fit like a charm and looked awesome. Those amps stayed so cool out in the open and didn’t get wet because they were under the gunnel. I then replaced all of the 6 ½” speakers with Kickers and reused the JL audio 15 and the Alpine deck. I went ahead and added indirect LED lighting throughout the boat as well. I added a bluetop battery for the boat and two yellow tops for the stereo along with a 12 amp onboard charger. I only added new 6 1/2"s The rest of the install was just a major remodel of where and how it was wired. By making these changes the whole boat came out awesome and I got tons of compliments everywhere we went even next to boats that were 3-5 times more money. I sold the boat after 2 years pocketing an extra $2k above what I had in it. When looking for a good used boat, don’t let the color throw you off. If the boat is great and the price is right, jump and work on the rest later.

I really like the concept of this site so I figured I would post a few of my projects to help get the juices flowing. The factory stereo in my boat was awful. Six 6” speakers driven by a bad deck and half of an oversize 4 channel amp driving the 10” woofer full range. I could not believe how bad the stereo was in such a nice boat. Thank goodness MB has Exile doing their stereos now. But I digress… I wanted a large stereo that looked stock and didn’t take up usable space in the boat. No offence to some others, but I didn’t want a floating stereo. I wanted a stereo to compliment the good times at the lake and be trouble free while we ride. I started by sealing up the factory sub location (not an easy task) and built a ¾” HDPE spacer beveled on one side matching the curve of the boat to allow a good seal for the new 12” Kicker sub. I then built a ported enclosure under the helm for the new 15” Kicker sub. I added a 3/8” HDPE trim plate to the front that still needs to be upholstered. I always like the depth of a 15” sub with the punch of a 12”. It’s definitely not lacking bass! I went ahead and put the Optima blue top battery for the boat behind this enclosure. In the observer compartment I installed two large group 31 Optima yellow tops for the stereo just under the front seat backs. With one forward and one sideways you barely see a third of the batteries under the front seats. I fabbed up HDPE brackets to keep the batteries in place without boxes. This allowed me to build my 1/2" HDPE amp rack/wall that holds all four Polk Audio amps and the Pro Mariner charger. I used stainless tee nuts to be able to bolt the equipment to the rack instead of screws. I don’t like to see wires so I hard wired the charger to a recessed plug just under the rear locker door so I don’t have to get in the boat to plug it in. I actually gained observer space over stock, even adding 3 more amps and onboard charger. Ignore the new batteries and you can see the original boxes and amp choked that compartment. I replaced all six of the stock speakers with Polk Audio MM 6.5” and added two more on the dash. At the same time as the stereo install, I pulled the windshield to powder coat it gloss black and tint the glass. While it was out I was able to cut the holes for the dash speakers perfectly. I installed the JL Audio Bluetooth receiver next to the throttle and slapper controls. This feeds my Wetsounds 420-SQ much like the exile set up in new MBs. Last but certainly not least I added a pair of Wetsounds Rev10 speakers on the tower. I tried to put them as far over and up to avoid bumping heads every trip.I also added dual USB ports in the glove box, at the helm, at both side speaker/drink holder areas and I put 12v outlets in the lockers to power ballast/air pumps. It turned out exactly like I wanted. Once the panel over the 15” sub is upholstered to match the rest of the boat you won’t know there is anything extra in the boat… until I turn it up of course. 1000w Polk amp – 15” Kicker sub 800w Polk amp – 8 Polk boat speakers 800w Polk amp – 2 Wetsounds Rev10s 500w Polk amp – 12” Kicker sub A few images of the powerdercoat and windshield tint.

I purchased a 2011 MB Sports B52 and decided it needed a surf enhancement. I read a lot of forum threads on multiple sites. I started with a wood "Slapper" (It's an MB thing) that slid on the step and attached to the tie down eye. This worked great for the one time we used it heading into winter. Unfortunately winter daydreaming about summer made me plan out a set of powered Slappers for the spring. I used white HDPE for the Slappers themselves and Lenco fast 4.25" actuators. Even though I had seen other versions with the slappers below the step height, I felt they needed to be a little taller to be the most effective. I shaped them with an elliptical curve to match the back end of my boat at the top. I didn't want a square cutting board hanging on my boat. After getting the nerve to drill holes under the waterline I mounted the boards and actuators. I know the WL controller is the best control option available but I couldn't see the need for the GPS option or the high cost of the controller. Being a control freak, pretty savvy with relays, timers and wiring, I came up with my own controller of the slappers. It was complicated to come up with something that would deploy the actuators with a momentary signal and give a light that it was deployed, but after a few sleepless nights I figured it out. In the end I hit one button to deploy my goofy actuator and pull my rider. While driving I can switch sides by just pushing the opposite button. The deployed acutator retracts and the other actuator deploys. The lights on the switches follows whichever gate is deployed. When the rider goes down, I press the Wipeout button and any deployed actuator retracts and I drive back to the rider without any steering issues. It really is a simple set of controls that is very intuitive and doesn't need complicated programming to adjust.