Fresh Air Exhaust

[Garn]

Is anyone familiar with this? It sounds like a pretty good idea. I was wondering if anyone has it on their boat or skied behind a boat with it. I would love to make my boat quieter.

 

http://www.freshairexhaust.com/

 

Garn

[chris_logan]

They say no change in performance, handling, or wake; yet, they do not back up that statement with pictures of the wake at speed. It appears to take up more space than a hydrogate, so I would assume it would have a bigger effect on the wake than a hydrogate would. You can't just drag a "vertical pipe" through the water at speed and see no change in the wake. I don't buy that story a bit.

[E_T]

Quieter ? Why on earth would you do that ? You paid good money to hear a SBC pound to the note of the 8-cyl gods. That's like slapping god in the face.

[colo_skier]

@Garn Your profile does not say what type of boat you have. Anyway I put it on mine. See my profile for my boat. It is indeed quieter. My boat makes more noise coming towards you than it does going away. You can hear your ski in the water now and hear the boat going through the water. I also installed an engine box silencer kit. So from the point of view of reducing noise it does. I initially did this to reduce early morning sets noise and to enhance the 4000+ watts of speakers I have for other times. Performance wise the initial hole shot is a little slower and there is not as much power from the boat at initial tug. I would say about 10 to 20% power loss on the initial pick up. After that everything seems the same. This is probably due to the fact that you don't have as much exit area for exhaust gases (back pressure is high) until the slip stream effect kicks in (Bernoulli's theorem). I did have to change some PP settings once the FAE was installed. I have a thread on here about what I had to do. However I am not totally convinced it was all due to the FAE and may have more to do with altitude here in CO and me suddenly being forced to pay attention to PP and z-box. The reduction in Exhaust (hence C02) gas is night and day. Yes we do occasionally put the wedge down, load up the weight and wake surf when the water ain't flat. People can now sit in the back lower corner and not have any fumes at all. As for the Wake, I cannot get any closer to the boat than 28 off at 32 MPH for a few bouys, and as far as I can tell there is no wake difference. When driving I don't see a difference however some say there is a small rooster tail within 15 ft of the boat when we are below 26 MPH. If I was just going to slalom and I didn't care about the noise I would probably put the black flappers back on. It's really not to difficult to change between the two once you have it installed the first time. If you are going to do this pm me and I can talk you through the "gotcha's" of an install. Hope this helps

[6balls]

I wonder if given proximity to the rudder and prop-wash if it may not create as much wake issue as it would seem. For those on public lakes skiing buoys early a.m., may be worth it to keep the peace (and hence the course in place without complaint).

@razorskier1 I guess you now have a last resort if things get dodgy.

[colo_skier]

@6balls It is really close to the rudder and is essentially in the middle of the prop wash. I had to work with FAE to come up with a method to stop the prop wash from pushing the exhaust back so that the wedge was usable, since on my boat the FAE goes through the wedge radius. I agree with you that I don't think it really has any effect upon the wake. The person that said I had a rooster there actually never saw my wake prior to the FAE install. If anybody is interested I could video the wake with or without the FAE so people could make their own conclusions. Will be a few weekends though before I can. @Razorskier1 If noise is an issue then this is definitely the solution. It is so much quieter than turn downs. You do have to have the little black flapper valve outers to make it work though. Hey Dave, hoping to actually ski in Colorado this weekend or Monday...... I here you guys still have major feet of snow on your water.... that sucks big time.

[6balls]

@colo_skier yeah and 42 inches of ice on the lake, too. Snow drifted on the lakeside so high last night all I can see is the top of a standard size light-post so it's gotta be 5-6 feet high.

[Garn]

@colo_skier, thanks so much for the input. I have a Moomba LS with the wakeplate in back. I would LOVE a quieter boat! I take it that you installed it yourself. Correct?

[DW]

@colo skier: nice commentary on the FAE, a comparison video would be great and appreciated. Did you or do you notice any rudder or steering effect? I just got back from the Summit, awesome snow right now & great (snow) skiing.

 

If you have the chrome tips either straight of turn down, one way to quite that version is to add your own set of rubber baffles, it helped my boat a lot. Process was to get a PVC ring (H-D or Lowes, etc.) and attach the baffle to that and then the ring to the stainless exhaust tip. The PVC ring acts as the flange for the flapper to attach to and the reversion stopper. The rubber flapper deadens sound whereas the stainless ones tend not to. It does not do what the FAE does and push the exhaust in to the water so not as effective as an FAE for noise or fumes.

[Razorskier1]

I ski early and exhaust noise is the complaint I get. May consider this if needed to keep the peace!

[colo_skier]

@Garn I did the install and worked with the FAE guys to get this working with the Response Manual wedge setup.

@DW Thanks I had the flappers and others at the lake had turn downs. I just mentioned the comparison because the noise is nowhere near the same for the FAE and the turn downs. FAE is the quietest by far. FAE does not work with turn downs, you need to buy flappers and I didn't have to change out turn downs. Also I have not noticed any rudder or steering effects with the FAE. I do however have my rudder pretty heavily loaded to make the course driving easier. Videos will have to be coming later.

[Garn]

@colo_skier‌, I would love to see some videos whenever you have them. Was it difficult to install? I would think Malibu's wedge would be a bit more tricky than Moomba's wakeplate.

[colo_skier]

@skibrain I have the hp as before its just at initial pull from standstill the boat just doesn't have the original jerk your arms off power. It takes a little longer to get the RPM's up under load. Also be aware that the drilling holes through the SS parts is a PITA. Get a lot of drill bits.

@Garn Each FAE is individually designed for each boat model. You are correct the wedge was an issue for quite a while for FAE.

[Waternut]

@colo_skier I have a lot of experience with exhaust tuning on high performance standup jetski's. You do have a lower holeshot due to all the water in the exhaust system. The exhaust gasses compress and can't clear out of the cylinder fast enough because the water can't compress nor can it move out of the lines fast enough. I'm guessing by the time you reach 1500-2000 rpms, the pickup feels the same?

In the jetski world, we do custom tuning to control the amount of water going into the exhaust system for this very purpose. Basically it's a flow control valve with an adjustable spring in it to lower the water flow going to the exhaust at lower rpms when cooling requirements are lower. It works like a champ! Granted a jetski cooling line is considerably smaller but the principle is the same and if you ever want that holeshot back, you may want to look into this and hook it up to the cooling lines going to the exhaust manifolds.

[GroovyGrant]

Does anyone have an FAE setup they want to sell? For an 01 SS LXI? I'm intrigued by them and considering trying one. Would definitely try it if I came across a deal on a used one.

[Garn]

@Waternut could you give me a bit more detail of "hook it up to the cooling lines going to the exhaust manifolds"?

[SkiOrDie]

@GroovyGrant‌ There is a used one for sale here. Originally on an 89 Prostar 190. May or may not work for you.

http://www.mastercraft.com/teamtalk/showthread.php?t=59263

[colo_skier]

@Waternut and @Garn While it may be possible to plumb something in that might help the initial tug in my opinion the amount of effort this would take far outweighs the results. My solution is to give it more throttle than I normally would. I am not sure that the altitude that I ski at (5000 ft) doesn't have more effect than it would have at lower altitude.

[Waternut]

@Garn I'm not sure how your boat would be set up but mine has a single cooling line from the raw water pump that splits on the front of the engine. Two of those lines go to the exhaust manifold and that's where a restrictor/flow control valve would go if you so desire. However, it does take some trial and error to get the flow right plus actually finding such a valve for that size hose.

 

@colo_skier‌ makes a good point. If giving a little extra throttle accomplishes the same goal, I wouldn't go through the trouble either. However, if you're already using full throttle to get someone up, then it could be worth it.