260DA..........Bravo III wander at slow speeds?

Dave S

Well-Known Member
TECHNICAL Contributor
Oct 3, 2006
6,014
Upstate South Carolina
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My 260DA tends to wander back at forth at slow speeds. My 240SD with a Bravo III tracked straight and true at slow speeds so this is a bit of a headscratcher for me. :smt017

Does anyone else experience this wandering with your Bravo III drive?
 
DAVE!!!

How are you doing? Well my single engine Bravo 3 280DA wandered something awful and it was very difficult to track at slow speeds. I found it to be better if I buried the outdrive down and deployed full tabs; why I don't know. Take care!

marq
 
Dave,

It is normal for larger single outdrive powered boats to wander a bit as they try to bow steer........the steeper the deadrise, the worse it is.

You can play with the drive trim.....some folks like to run the boat with the trim all the way down which forces the bow to plow, otheres idle up as soon as they can to get enough lift to hold the bow up and prevent it from wandering. My experience is that eliminating as much oversteer or constant correction helps more than anything......focus on a point further away from the boat and set a course for it rather than steering to a nearby point or the GPS route line.

Almost all boats have handling quirks......this is one for the larger single engine Sea Rays.
 
Dave,

Our 240 DA does the same. not real bad, but it does wander around. I was kind of surprised when I first got the boat. I figured the counter rotating screws would dispatch the tendency to wander.

Cheers,

Jim
 
Hey Dave,

Looks like Frank hit it on the head again. Just be glad you have the Bravo III think how bad it would be with just a single prop :grin:
 
The wander is normal at slow speeds. My 26 Cruisers did also, with a Volvo Duo-prop.
However, wander is not the same, nor near as bad as squirm, (or prop steer) as you would be getting with a single prop drive. My 22 Sea Ray with an Alpha would squirm at slow speeds, that is, the stern would have a tendancy to drift to starboard.
As mentioned above, trim all the way down, and try max tabs, adjusting the bow down a bit, and it should improve.
Let us know what you think... :wink:
 
Yeah the single prop Alpha drive on my 230 Sundancer wanders quite noticably and uncontrollably at idle/no wake speeds..... I didn't know the trick others mentioned (to play with the trim tabs to try to mitigate it somewhat) but will try that next time I'm out.
 
FWIW, my 23 tends to wander more if I leave the outdrive trimmed all the way down while idling. What works best for my boat is to idle up to 900 - 1000 rpm, give her a bit of positive trim, keep my hand off the wheel and only make minor corrections if necessary.
 
Thanks for the tips everyone. I'll give the tabs down approach a try the next time out.

The wander isn't too bad...........I put it into the "annoying" category. At least I now understand why it wanders and the fact that it's not unique to my particular boat.
 
The twins do it too. Our 290AJ with twin 5.0 Bravo III wanders like crazy, at idle speed, with the drives trimmed out (up, or "straight"). I read on another forum (maybe SRO) about this tendency and the answer was to "tuck them in" a little. Sure enough, trimming them in a little made them track as straight as can be. Only was a problem at idle speed. Above 800-900 rpm it was fine. On the gauges, full out trim reads 1/2 (to raise them higher requires tow switch). The wandering disappears when the gauges read at least 3/8 (between 1/4 and 1/2) or lower. Curious if other twin bravo 3 owners experienced the same?
 
We took the boat out today and what a difference lowering the trim tabs makes along with tucking in the OD. Wandering was almost totally gone using these techniques at slow speeds.

Thanks again everone for the tips. CSR rocks.

:smt038 :smt038 :smt038
 
As a side note I found the 260DA to be a difficult boat to master in so far as trim tabs are concerned. (Or maybe I should say that the owner has had a difficult time mastering the use of the trim tabs. :smt021 )

One thing I have learned is that deploying the trim tabs in full down postion and then attempting to get the boat on plane is.......how do I say this................interesting. The boat will really start to list sharply to one side as it comes onto plane and it is difficult to correct fast enough by adjusting the tabs. I am not sure why it does this unless one of tabs is not deploying far enough.......something I can check on my next haul out. So I have found that if I expect to get the boat on plane, I am much better off not using the tabs at all. I may get more bow rise than I like but at least I feel like I am in control. So my use of the tabs is for slower cruising or balancing side to side loads only.

I have found mastering the use of the trim tabs to be one of the more difficult things to do on the 260DA ..........so much so that I was going to opt for the Bennett Auto Tab Controls. But now that I know how the boat reacts to the use of tabs at various speeds along with proper trimminng of the outdrive, I don't feel I need to consider it any longer.
 
This is I believe, a function of the physics of a single engine boat. I had a 260DA and it behaved the same way. My twin engined 300DA, with practically the same deadrise, was much more stable with the tabs coming on to plane. I believe the weight equally spread across the stern helps counteract this tendency for the boat to list into the wind while it is on plane. Maybe some of the others who have transitioned from single engine to twins with a larger beam can confirm this.
 

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