cowwboy

As many of the older bu owners I was not very fond of the hidden head unit under your arm rest. I saw where someone on Wakeworld years ago took the gauge bezel from the next generation bu and put in a double din in the dash. So I got the same gauge bezel and kept it till I found a new head unit I like. Few years down the road and they finally release the MC-1. Here is a pic of the old vs new gauge panel. Here is the gauge shroud? that I got years back off ebay installed in my dash. My local malibu dealer hooked me up with the gauge bezel that fir in it and had the two outer gauges so I could use it as a template. I then used a router table to make the gauge bezel out of HDPE. The MC-1 has an Aux in, Aux out, and the USB input and I couldn't find a off the shelf mount that had it all built in. So I downloaded the cad software from https://www.frontpanelexpress.com/ and had them make a panel to fit the panel mount headphone jacks and usb I got from amazon. FYI Front panel express is amazing to work with. Their software broke down the costs of the machining so I could see where little rounding of corners and edges doubled the project price. Or the text of my boats name cost almost nothing. I still need to change the input panels screws to black so they blend better. But it will be awesome being able to receive audio via an A-link and then transmit to another A-link for big cove tie ups. The only downside to this mounting location and the screen is that the viewing angle isn't to great. So if you are sitting with the flip up bolster down you can see fine but when the bolster is up it gets kind of hard to see all of the graphics. But I could shave the mount so it has a slight bit of a upward til to the screen. Also I may wrap the panel mount in vinyl or get one machined out of aluminum. But we will see, the plain black HDPE is growing on me.

Before you could get custom bags made from wakemakers I was stuck with 3/4" fittings. So I decided to add 1 1/8" fittings to my bags for a reversible pump. I planned on using the flow-rite through hull fittings with RTV silicone added to ensure a leak free seal. Here is the fitting I used. https://flow-rite.com/products/marine/1-18-fittings/ma-044-qlb I hooked up a air pump to ensure it would stay inflated so I could work with the bag. I then drew out the hole needed for the port to go through but left it a tad on the small side. I then used a new razor blade to carefully cut the hole out. I then pushed the mushroom end of the fitting through the bag after putting a liberal coating of rtv on the edge of the fitting that would mate with the bag. Then just put the nut on and tighten down. Definitely measure 4 times cut once. It was almost as unnerving as drilling hole through the hull.

I have a 7' garage door and to get the boat to fit we had to remove the front hoop ever time. So after talking with Titan they hooked me up with a swivel joint that I believe was used on the nautiques. I don't have a tig and didn't want to use my mig on the tower so I outsourced the welding and fitting. One issue I do have is that the wishbone on the front hoop has two radius and the joint was designed for the one angle. So when you fold it down it slightly rotates the lower legs a bit but since they are helm joints it's not really a problem. I have had one time where I had to slam on the brakes really hard and the force caused the front legs to bend slightly which bent my top mounting plate. So I wish I had a locking pin or bolt to lock in the joints. But it has never happened again. It has made it sooo much easier to put in the garage now.