"Tom Francis - SWSports" wrote in
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I've already admitted that I don't have a lot of experience with
outdrives, but I ran into something this morning with the Pro Line
that was fixed that may, or may not, be imagination.
I took the boat up to Webster Lake this morning to run it up for a
prospective buyer. Everything seems to work ok - boat is running
fine,nothing seems amiss, but I noticed something odd - or at least I
think it's odd.
When you cram the throttle for a hole shot, the boat rotates slightly
to starboard along it's bow/stern axis - almost like the torgue roll
you get with a high horsepower car. At least it feels like that to me
- it's not a violent movement by any means, but it feels funky.
It that normal? Just asking - I've never "felt" this before on other
outdrive boats I've tested or driven.
Newton's Third Law of Motion. Your analogy to a torque roll in a high
horsepower car is applicable. In this case, since the boat is resting in
water versus the car on land, the boat is naturally more tender and will
exhibit Newton's Third Law by way of a reaction to torque being applied to
the longitudinal axis with less input (torque) than was required for the
car. This phenomena is one of the reasons counter-rotating propellers were
invented for torpedoes and ultimately for outdrives. If that boat had a
Bravo 3 drive instead of an Alpha drive, you couldn't get it to rotate on
the longitudinal no matter how hard you stuffed the go stick.