My dad told me once "Dave get an off road car for offroad, and a street car for the street. If you get one that tries to do both, you will get one that isn't very good at either." I have listened to that logic for pretty much all of my life, and have always found it to be accurate. In short, I hate crossovers, hybrids, mixer matchers, because they are historically always halfassers.
After this years Los Angeles Boat Show, I took a detour down to Eliminator to see Uncle Bob and see what was going on. He had told me a little bit about this 260 Eagle they had built with a Teague 985 in it. The kicker is it has a wakeboard tower. Bob and I had a few conversations about this, and he kept telling me how cool the boat is, and the conversation kept ending with "C'mon Bob, who puts a roll bar on a hot rod!"
As with anything in life though one has to try to keep an open mind to everything or you will never learn anything. If Bob (The godfather of Hotboats) says it's cool, then we have to at least check it out, so that's exactly what I did.
On first glance I was pretty much sticking to my guns, but as I crawled through it I kept saying "Well that's kind of cool... Ooooohhh that's kind of neat" and I will admit even as a die hard I came out of it with the opinion that I could see myself owning this boat. What's worse is, it's been months since the LA show and I'm still thinking about it. Technically I was supposed to be writing another article right now, but I keep thinking about this boat and how perfect it would be for my family. It's a lot easier to write a boat when you are excited about it, so this is the story of one of the world's baddest wake board boats.
Lets look at the transom first. The Engine is coupled to an IMCO SCX drive with an IMCO transom assembly with full Hydraulic steering. The boat has tabs mounted parallel to the water which will help with Chine walking at higher speeds, but also pull double duty for low speed balancing, and bowrise during board sports. Note the oversized swimstep covers the entire drive & prop making it much safer / easier for tow sports (The swim step is also on quick releases so you can pull it off if you needed to fit it in a garage or shorten the boat length for some reason).
The second feature dedicated to tow sports you might notice is the exhaust is way below the waterline. This is so when you are idling, you can easily talk to your skier / boarder without having to yell to them over the sound of a 985. The exhaust also features Gatlin mufflers in the tips which quelches the noise while cruising around with a wake boarder in tow, but don't restrict enough to affect top end performance much. The low X-Dimension of the drive will allow the boat to cruise at low speeds without blowing the prop out, but it will give up some on the top end.
Now that we have looked at the control surfaces, a peek up at the controls is certainly in order. We'll start with the Isotta "Aria" steering wheel that is attached to a stainless IMCO tilt helm. Instrumentation is all Livorsi, with what looks to be "Mega" stainless steel rims and Eddie bezzels. The Tach and Speedo are Livorsi Private Label guages for Eliminator.
The throttle and Shifter are Eddie Marines Elite "competition" series, and you can see they tucked BlueWater mechanical indicators right into the gunnel ahead of the drivers seat. I hate to use the phrase "everything was laid out nice" because god knows I have poked enough fun at magazine articles that say that over the years, but sitting in the drivers seat everything was perfect. That little arm rest let you rest your elbow and my hand fell right onto the throttle, I could still easily glance over and see the indicators, it had a real nice ergonomic feel to the whole program. Coming out of most Hot Rod boats that are "prehistoric" for lack of a better word, the whole program felt pretty refined. (Amazing the difference a little arm rest can make, and a nice steering wheel) The stereo would have been kind of a pain in the ass to use, but who really does that while driving anyways. That's what all the remotes are for all over the boat, one of the passengers can play DJ while underway.
Typically 260's don't have windshields on them (that I have seen) but to keep with the wakeboard theme they put these small windshields on it that were actually optically clear (no distortion looking through them ahead).
The matching yellow paint at the base of them was a nice touch!
Now I'm going to get to the part that really impressed me about this boat. The interior layout is just bitchen. I could see myself doing this in a hot rod that pulls double duty as a bar hopper. I have always loved ski boat seating, and it's really nice to see it in a performance boat. The wrap around seating is all about functionality and opens up the seating area quite a bit for more passengers.
You could put two families in this boat for a whole day on the water and not feel cramped. There is a huge amount of storage in the helms between the cabin and the open bow. These are typically where you would put your coolers, but for die hard board sports guys you could also load fat sacks in here for different weight distribution.
Since we are talking about the storage in between the helms we should take a peak at the quality of Rigging Eliminator is known for. You can see everything is through bolted on the deck. Not sure anybody is going to do much better then that on the wiring. My only complaint, is I'm not a fan of the hydraulic hoses running across the amp like that, but it's not the end of the world. You can see they are using the machined Bulkhead fittings to run the bulk wires through which is a nice touch. There are also two 12 inch subs in boxes in each side, but I can only upload so many pictures in an article and a square box with a kicker sub isn't hard to imagine.
Amp on the passenger side.
Right Above your head you will find 4 cans on the tower, that will ensure plenty of tunes for the rider, or all your friends at the sandbar. Note the full mesh bimini. Eliminator would never admit it, but you can run 80+ mph with these up, because they don't trap the wind like a standard Bimini will.
There are some extremely clean lighted fiberglass recesses everywhere in the boat that have cup holders and speakers.
To continue with the interior details, there was tiny LED's mounted on the seat basis for ambiance lighting.
I'm going to pull your attention to the passenger side back corner of the boat. You will find a recessed battery switch. If you are like me, this little feature is an extremely nice "user friendly" touch. In my boat you have to pull the back seat cushion up and reach down to turn it. In other boats sometimes you have to pull seat cushions and reach into the engine bay which is a pain in the ass. Why more people don't do a nice clean, easy installation like this is beyond me.
Next to the battery switch, was a recessed male 110 plug. This plug is retractable, and goes to the onboard charger! You pull the boat into the garage, flip open the cover, and pull the cord out and plug it into the wall and you are done until your next trip!! I have to give two HUGE thumbs up to Eliminator for both of these little details!
Unfortunately some of my files got "corrupted" so I don't have a lot of pics of the engine bay, but this is what I was able to save. At the heart of this family friendly tow boat, is a fire breathing Teague Custom Marine 985!!
On either side of the motor you can see just the tops of two glassed in boxes. The boxes are a place for serious boarders to put fat sacks to increase wake height, but they can also pull double duty for just regular storage. The boat was rigged to the 9's, and it is exemplary of Eliminators top tier rigging abilities. My only complaint that sticks out, is if you are going to use a billet tank on one of the trim pumps, you should use it on all of them.
So to wrap this up, I'm sure the guys on wakeworld are rolling their eyes at this possibly being a good wakeboard boat, but if you spent a little time figuring out the ballast situation I believe this could put out a wake pretty damn close to what a dedicated tow boat would. The difference being when you drain the ballast you don't need a kidney belt to ride in it, and with the HP, it will blow off 90% of the performance boats out on the water!
The conclusion to all of this is maybe what my dad told me when I was young isn't a die hard rule to live by. I find myself thinking about this boat often, and can't help but imagine that something like this would be a perfect fit for my family in the future.
For more information contact Eliminator Boats
www.eliminatorboat.com
800-306-3343
After this years Los Angeles Boat Show, I took a detour down to Eliminator to see Uncle Bob and see what was going on. He had told me a little bit about this 260 Eagle they had built with a Teague 985 in it. The kicker is it has a wakeboard tower. Bob and I had a few conversations about this, and he kept telling me how cool the boat is, and the conversation kept ending with "C'mon Bob, who puts a roll bar on a hot rod!"
As with anything in life though one has to try to keep an open mind to everything or you will never learn anything. If Bob (The godfather of Hotboats) says it's cool, then we have to at least check it out, so that's exactly what I did.
On first glance I was pretty much sticking to my guns, but as I crawled through it I kept saying "Well that's kind of cool... Ooooohhh that's kind of neat" and I will admit even as a die hard I came out of it with the opinion that I could see myself owning this boat. What's worse is, it's been months since the LA show and I'm still thinking about it. Technically I was supposed to be writing another article right now, but I keep thinking about this boat and how perfect it would be for my family. It's a lot easier to write a boat when you are excited about it, so this is the story of one of the world's baddest wake board boats.
Lets look at the transom first. The Engine is coupled to an IMCO SCX drive with an IMCO transom assembly with full Hydraulic steering. The boat has tabs mounted parallel to the water which will help with Chine walking at higher speeds, but also pull double duty for low speed balancing, and bowrise during board sports. Note the oversized swimstep covers the entire drive & prop making it much safer / easier for tow sports (The swim step is also on quick releases so you can pull it off if you needed to fit it in a garage or shorten the boat length for some reason).
The second feature dedicated to tow sports you might notice is the exhaust is way below the waterline. This is so when you are idling, you can easily talk to your skier / boarder without having to yell to them over the sound of a 985. The exhaust also features Gatlin mufflers in the tips which quelches the noise while cruising around with a wake boarder in tow, but don't restrict enough to affect top end performance much. The low X-Dimension of the drive will allow the boat to cruise at low speeds without blowing the prop out, but it will give up some on the top end.
Now that we have looked at the control surfaces, a peek up at the controls is certainly in order. We'll start with the Isotta "Aria" steering wheel that is attached to a stainless IMCO tilt helm. Instrumentation is all Livorsi, with what looks to be "Mega" stainless steel rims and Eddie bezzels. The Tach and Speedo are Livorsi Private Label guages for Eliminator.
The throttle and Shifter are Eddie Marines Elite "competition" series, and you can see they tucked BlueWater mechanical indicators right into the gunnel ahead of the drivers seat. I hate to use the phrase "everything was laid out nice" because god knows I have poked enough fun at magazine articles that say that over the years, but sitting in the drivers seat everything was perfect. That little arm rest let you rest your elbow and my hand fell right onto the throttle, I could still easily glance over and see the indicators, it had a real nice ergonomic feel to the whole program. Coming out of most Hot Rod boats that are "prehistoric" for lack of a better word, the whole program felt pretty refined. (Amazing the difference a little arm rest can make, and a nice steering wheel) The stereo would have been kind of a pain in the ass to use, but who really does that while driving anyways. That's what all the remotes are for all over the boat, one of the passengers can play DJ while underway.
Typically 260's don't have windshields on them (that I have seen) but to keep with the wakeboard theme they put these small windshields on it that were actually optically clear (no distortion looking through them ahead).
The matching yellow paint at the base of them was a nice touch!
Now I'm going to get to the part that really impressed me about this boat. The interior layout is just bitchen. I could see myself doing this in a hot rod that pulls double duty as a bar hopper. I have always loved ski boat seating, and it's really nice to see it in a performance boat. The wrap around seating is all about functionality and opens up the seating area quite a bit for more passengers.
You could put two families in this boat for a whole day on the water and not feel cramped. There is a huge amount of storage in the helms between the cabin and the open bow. These are typically where you would put your coolers, but for die hard board sports guys you could also load fat sacks in here for different weight distribution.
Since we are talking about the storage in between the helms we should take a peak at the quality of Rigging Eliminator is known for. You can see everything is through bolted on the deck. Not sure anybody is going to do much better then that on the wiring. My only complaint, is I'm not a fan of the hydraulic hoses running across the amp like that, but it's not the end of the world. You can see they are using the machined Bulkhead fittings to run the bulk wires through which is a nice touch. There are also two 12 inch subs in boxes in each side, but I can only upload so many pictures in an article and a square box with a kicker sub isn't hard to imagine.
Amp on the passenger side.
Right Above your head you will find 4 cans on the tower, that will ensure plenty of tunes for the rider, or all your friends at the sandbar. Note the full mesh bimini. Eliminator would never admit it, but you can run 80+ mph with these up, because they don't trap the wind like a standard Bimini will.
There are some extremely clean lighted fiberglass recesses everywhere in the boat that have cup holders and speakers.
To continue with the interior details, there was tiny LED's mounted on the seat basis for ambiance lighting.
I'm going to pull your attention to the passenger side back corner of the boat. You will find a recessed battery switch. If you are like me, this little feature is an extremely nice "user friendly" touch. In my boat you have to pull the back seat cushion up and reach down to turn it. In other boats sometimes you have to pull seat cushions and reach into the engine bay which is a pain in the ass. Why more people don't do a nice clean, easy installation like this is beyond me.
Next to the battery switch, was a recessed male 110 plug. This plug is retractable, and goes to the onboard charger! You pull the boat into the garage, flip open the cover, and pull the cord out and plug it into the wall and you are done until your next trip!! I have to give two HUGE thumbs up to Eliminator for both of these little details!
Unfortunately some of my files got "corrupted" so I don't have a lot of pics of the engine bay, but this is what I was able to save. At the heart of this family friendly tow boat, is a fire breathing Teague Custom Marine 985!!
On either side of the motor you can see just the tops of two glassed in boxes. The boxes are a place for serious boarders to put fat sacks to increase wake height, but they can also pull double duty for just regular storage. The boat was rigged to the 9's, and it is exemplary of Eliminators top tier rigging abilities. My only complaint that sticks out, is if you are going to use a billet tank on one of the trim pumps, you should use it on all of them.
So to wrap this up, I'm sure the guys on wakeworld are rolling their eyes at this possibly being a good wakeboard boat, but if you spent a little time figuring out the ballast situation I believe this could put out a wake pretty damn close to what a dedicated tow boat would. The difference being when you drain the ballast you don't need a kidney belt to ride in it, and with the HP, it will blow off 90% of the performance boats out on the water!
The conclusion to all of this is maybe what my dad told me when I was young isn't a die hard rule to live by. I find myself thinking about this boat often, and can't help but imagine that something like this would be a perfect fit for my family in the future.
For more information contact Eliminator Boats
www.eliminatorboat.com
800-306-3343
