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quiet airboats

plumcrazy

plumcrazy

Well-known member
I have seen the future and it is here! When your sitting in 500 acre marsh with a creek running thru it comepletly surounded by 100 ft cypress trees and there a guy 50 yrds away froggin some pretty nasty crappy terrain and you can carry on a conversation on your cell phone thats when it hits you [that guy aint pissin nobody off no matter where hes running] i swear the worst sound i could hear was the gear box so now igot to spend more money AGAIN and rebuild my boat AGAIN so im going to be asking a lot of ?s of curtain fellows out there so get ready for some PM
 
Well, keep the rest of us in the loop. Up here there are no muffler laws but I still like the idea of a quiet boat. I put the MagnaFlow mufflers on my last two boats and it made a big difference but it could use more. I'm going to try those Super Trapp muffler disks as well.

It's also nice to see someone spell quiet correctly. I remember flying once when my engine quit. It got quite quiet after that and I had to dead stick it in.

Let the rest of know what secrets you find that makes those boats quiet.
 
Glad to here this from you. I maybe had three people ask me what I did to win the sound demonstration competition. The most I ever hear is from the aircraft guy's and they tell me I'm ruining airboating because now everybody will be made to run quite. Some of them A/C guy's get really mad and pissed when you bring up mufflers or making a boat quite. I guess its the Harley thing! I know Country is also putting allot of effort into making his boat quite I'm sure he has got the same response. Oh well I know I enjoy talking to people while running my boat without having to yell plus the fact people don't hear me coming.
 
Thunder its my boat he is talkin about. I get the same comments as you do as we have discussed in person before. people so far are not all warm and fuzzy when it comes to quiet airboats.

The stuff he was talkin about me runnin in was actually a rather large floating mat that I didn't move and had to drive off of at full throttle for a while. It wasn't 25' and get on plane, it was more like oh crap I hope I get off here at all.

I snuck up on them sitting out on the lake as well the night before but that was easy it was open water. The floating islands now they are for real no playin around there.

thanks plumcrazy, you got my number anytime you want advice.
 
Around here we call them a floating mud tussell. I have had to push a few of them untill they broke apart. They are propbably the hardest thing to ever run an airboat thru because on ground it's only your bottom sticking but in a mud tussell you boat sits in it and the sides are stuck in the mud. When you can push or run thru a mud tussell you have a bad @ss boat!
 
I have a dream. My dream is to be able to sit on a nice fast plane and be able to talk to my wife in not much more than a normal conversational tone. I believe it can be done.

When it is done, the anti's are going to have to start hammering on the bass boats and leave us the hell alone.

olf
 
found a mud tussel for the first time on the new BARGE I call an airboat..we pushed it for a while till it broke up a bit...got out the paddle broke it up mashed down the sides, put everyone to the rear and got off pretty easy. It's a bit scary when your hull takes that nose dive in the middle of them.
 
A quiet Airboat will be one that you can talk on the cell phone while in the passenger seat and on plane... and if you think it can not be done then you are in the same class of people that said we could not fly -- What a horse less carriage???
 
I can talk on the cell phone on plane. The only problem is the 30 mph breeze on the cell phone speaker. I want to talk on the cell phone while running dry ground up hill. And seriously I am not kiddin I have been yalkin on my phone while drivin on plane.
 
everyone loves there phones, but who really wants to talk on the phone when your out enjoying your boat. i always tell bodies meet me here if there not there then call them. its only a matter of time before were getting tickets for talking on the phone on the airboat. LOL i have an aircraft boat and it would be alot more enjoyable if i didn't need ear phones it really isn't that loud but it could be alot quietier.
 
Thunder's boat really inspired me to make mine even Quiter after I got back from New Orleans I told my self I need to do something to make my boat quiter so I could hear people when they yell for help that was the reason for the drive system change the Q series prop did the most and then I put the supertraps on the end of my exhaust on top of the mufflers I all ready had and now the three blade prop instead of the two blade Q series and I think now my boat is dern neer as quit as thunders, his boat was my bench mark becaue I have never herd countrys boat yet but I can now have a conversation in my boat at cruze and it is great.
 
Thanks Sniper for the information. No one else seemed to want to say how they were able to make their boat quieter. It looks like mufflers, then SuperTrapp end caps. Next is a Sensenich Q series prop and last is a 3 blade Q series. That all looks pretty simple. It just takes money.

Are there any other secrets that could help? Someone told me that I should keep the flex pipe as short as possible and eliminate it if I could. I may try that in my next boat. Did anyone have objective success on the crossover pipes? That idea looks more complex, but if it works, I'd try it.
 
My boat runs well under 80db on a plane I think it tested twice at 76. When I'm on plane you can talk on a phone or hold a conversation with somebody in the back seat without having to turn around. I point things out to my wife and daughter all the time with out yelling or turning around. I was also surprised by how much more game I see now, I think the animals are smarter then we give them credit for. I believe they hear an airboat and know they have a certain amount of time before they run and hide. I see turkeys allot now in my boat and that really hasn't happened much before. One thing I have added that helps reduce sound is down turns, to bounce the sound waves off the water. Remember sound is like any other form of energy every time it changes direction it losses energy. Another thing I did that drasticly removed sound is the down turns I installed aiming towards the water they made a large difference. I also have a killer new idea that almost completely cancels out the engine exhaust sound and I have pulled a provisional patent for it. However seeing how nobody is interested in making their boats quite I have put it on the back burner for now. I'm thinking about approaching some boat builders and just selling it I know of one who would run with it.
 
one thing I noticed on Sunday when I took a very close friend from Alaska out in my boat with the new three blade prop was how much better my head sets work now I can hear and have a conversation much better now so that was a big pluss
 
I have seen a few auto powered airboats running stock cast iron exhaust manifolds rather than headers and that made quite a difference quieting down their boats. Solid exhaust pipes and ss auto style flexjoints have - so far - kept their systems from cracking.
 
Bigdaddy

GM made some nice cast iron headers for 'Vetts. They perform better than the old log manifolds or the ram horns. I bit weighty but they aren't loud and they bolt up nice n tight.

Scotty
 
One of the quietest boats at the Demo back in May was Frank Bagwell's.
He had a 383 Chevy with a belt drive, cast iron exhaust manifolds, and off the shelf mufflers from NAPA.

He blew 81.9 db on plane, and just over 93 db on hard acceleration. The boat sounded very quiet and ran strong.

olf
 
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