Laid Back Boaters

it's a disease plain and simple. just look at the pictures and notice the clouds, fog, rain and cold and you will realize you're one sick puppy!
Scott too, for that matter

Nicely done!

In my opinion you've firmly placed yourself in Panther Jet lore. If someone would have taken the initiative at the factory and done R&R like this sometime over, oh I don't know, maybe the last 4 focking decades, Panther might not have the anemic reputation that it has to this day. There's much more to a boat than to see how fast it will go so I 'm not talking about that. I'm talking about having a set up that does more than push the boat through the water. Frank Place revolutionized the jet boat business back in the the day with his product. What you've done is no different, maybe a little late which is no fault of yours, but outstanding just the same giving someone who might own a Panther some leverage.

At any rate...it's very cool.

Thanks Old Rigger. I could not agree with you more about Panthers lack of R&D. I have owned this ol Tahiti for 18 years, and believe me there was more than 1 time I was almost willing to rent a small plane, fly over Drain, Oregon, and drop my pump from about 5,000 feet through the roof of the Panther Plant. But as time went along and I found out a little more about the engineering of pump. I always thought it must have a little more to offer. When I found the sleeved pump I have now. That was a huge improvement in performance and reliability.

I understand as well, this is not a race pump. Then again neither are the hulls most Panthers came rigged in. I guess sometime engineers at least the one who came up with the Pantervator conversion, somehow lost site of the application. and only came up with a design solution. The tolerances around the nozzle were never considered, neither were the few simple basic additional problems they created when they modified the extention housing. I did everything in this thread in my garage at home. With not much more than a 4 1/2" disc grinder, a die grinder, a few files, and small piece of stainless (3" X 3" X 1/4") and a small piece of aluminum (4" X 5" X 1/4") My only advantage was being able to perform the welding here at home. The stainless wouldnt be needed if Panther would have cut the tubing at an angle on the leading edge initially. Thanks again all for watching. Its really nice to actually find a simple mod that fixes a Major Issue.

here something for you steve to think about. You know that droop nozole that cas has ,dose it have the same end on it as your stock one dose .And if so can that be changed like you did to your new one.And would it work good like your new mod was done and be able to have a droop with your nozole,just wondering about that let me know

to answer your question Scott, yes, it's the same. It's a stock stator housing that was modified into a droop and I've been thinking the same thing as you. Other than modifying it to accept the diverter, I think the angle of the nozzle needs to be changed to about 4º up instead of where it is now. I also think it would get his boat up out of the water to free it up even more.

we are on the same page .I think it would be worth trying for him . I know when I put my droop on it made a night and day differnce. The other thing I was thinking the extra length of the tube for the water to follow threw to give it more direction. im not good with words but you proubly get my point

the only thing about it is. I need to have the droop machined for the nozzle insert. heres a drawing of how its milled out in a kind of "V" at the end.


and heres a pic of how a stock one is. with the yellow area that would be milled out.


I can get it machined, I just dont know if you want to modify your droop

I don't really care if it's modified, I've been thinking how it will need to be being there's a bend real close to where the machine work will need to be done

So you have a high quality picture of that Panther Droop you can upload? I have a couple of other revisions, I was thinking about. slight modification of how Panther does their Jetovator. I found a couple pretty kool old Items for my Boat today. An Original Tahiti "Logo cast on it" Foot throttle out of an old 19 foot Tahiti with a Berk on it. I just traded him straight across for an old HallCraft pedal assembly I had gathering dust. And I also got a cavitaion plate control lever out of an old V-Drive from him. Im going to use it for a Jetovator controller. Its much stouter and shorter then the quicky one I made out of an old automatic shift lever I had laying around. I'll post a couple pics when I can.

Good score on the Tahiti foot throttle! It's not too often that they come available anymore.

These are the only pictures I have of the droop, not very detailed and clear though.






My thoughts are with the way the water is flowing through, it will most likely hit both the top and bottom of the internal diverter. I have a feeling that the inside of the nozzle may need to be built up quite a bit for a smooth transition. It's been a long time since I really looked at it though. The other possible issue with it is the Stator Housing is missing the stator rings although it didn't appear to be a problem on the boats ths this was put on.

Wow that is a strange looking animal! Right off the get go, I would think that in order to perform all that it can be, (keeping in mind the Axial thing) It would need a nice clean path. maybe a little port and polish so to speak. Limiting the exit size seems to really slow the old Panthers down. We will definately have to hook up, so I can borrow that thing, and see how its laid out. I can always try it out with my stock steering nozzle. would like to anyways for the history book. Looks like I may have to invest in a stop watch

Ya know, Shasta Lake sure sounds like a great place to play with all these Panther Pieces, prolly be enough boats to run a performance test against. (who said we were racing? ) always a good way to see if your improving or not!

I'll be the shitty base model panther to run against for your constant suck level to improve on! lol!!

I'll be at Shasta 78_Tahiti so we can do a side by side runs my pump has zero mods.
All my mods are in the motor

damn, I'm jealous now and wanting my old 21' Tahiti back so I can join in