Buckethead

Not much chatter about the buckethead this weekend. Who's going? What boat? How is it coming together?

Keep us posted. Pics are good too.

Tim, Dave and Zach have been geeking out on group chat the past 3 weeks.

Any Deep Rudder guys have a 351w RR harmonic balancer they want to get rid of? Let me know I’ll be at the race.

Good luck fellas

Larry, we did pretty well given the weather. Windy and running into a storm from the start. Running away from the storm at the end.This was one of the best Buckethead starts in race history. I think all but one maybe 2 boats made it past the 4 mile boat.

Tim nailed the driving part and got us out ahead of all but 1 boat at the shotgun start, Brad laid down a 4+ mile run basically pinned at 47 mph the whole first leg(I think we backed off a couple mph when he started 1 footing),

After that we were nipping on the heals of the Vette boat the whole way even past the turn. The water got awful between the turn and the Napoleon boat ramp. We had some trouble getting a skier up in that area but I finally got up skiing and did a nice slow 38 MPH run out of all that garbage water to get us back online.

The team skied great, Tim's 79 ran great. Dave laid down some really nice WOT runs. Scott, Kev, and I skied admirably but I think our stand out skiers this year were Tim and Brad. Brad for his 4+ mile start and Tim brought us home over the finish with a 3-4 ish mile run at WOT after being gassed from the whole race.

We are always looking for improvements but we are pretty darn happy with this run 4th with 10 teams participating. Besides me speed wise we are getting to the point where we are boat speed limited,

Top gun took top honors per usual. These times aren't exact because I don't remember the seconds.
Top Gun- 54 Min
Wolfpack- 1:06
Corvette- 1:11
Deep Rudders- 1:13

Very cool. Congrats guys. More than respectable..

Way Cool! Hopefully someone has some video.

We had some high points and low points but always a thrill. Hell of a fun weekend.

We missed Steve (tullfooter) this year. Hope to see him back. Patrick ran in a ‘85, not sure who it belonged to but it sure looked good from where I was standing. Pretty wide range of times this year, from top gun’s 54min blaze to 2 teams head to head at the 1:45 mark. If anyone here has any interest in running this crazy event, I would highly recommend going for it. Get a few guys together and do it.

Mark shared wolfpacks race via the Buckethead Facebook page. Hoping to see some pics from any spectators- this isn’t an easy event to photograph if you’re skiing it.

Great race, great party, great time.
Hats off to the Deep Rudders that’s one hell of a race and to finish where they did is a huge accomplishment.
The first place Texas team is from the same area in Texas and they train together and race other races in Texas together compared to our team who is separated by hundreds of miles and only get together a couple times a year.

GREAT JOB GUYS!!!!!!

It was a blast as usual, Deep Rudder guys killed it. Top Gun and the new PCM re-powered boats make speed the game, bad water conditions leveled the playing field. I was on Hot Feet Ugly Footer, 8th was a disappointment (nice pic Gun-driver), but we will be back.

Riley wrote: What are the old BFNs with new PCM engines getting for speed? On the Buckethead facebook page there is a photo of a grey and yellow BFN with a new 450hp PCM. Any idea on its speed?

I have seen the GPS of 56 on the yellow / gray BFN

The 91 needs a really large prop and special weighting to do that. I think its good for 56 or 58 with a race friendly prop.

Seems like every 6.0 409 or 450 DD BFN will run right at 56. The yellow boat is rumored to have gone 57-58 in perfect conditions.

Top gun Sanger with a 409 and this year a 450 seemed to perform the same, They say it'll pull a skier and a full boat 53-54 mph.

Both the red 450 and yellow 450 were having engine issues. Red 450 boat should have been fairly competitive with the skiers they had on the team.

The 6.0 in an 87+ BFN seems to be an excellent combo. Wolfpack 450 boat had way too much propeller and was only running around 4800 RPMS WOT. I am not sure if that cut off of their time any but who knows, They skied great with only a 4 man team.

Way to represent boys!