looking for good second boat for newbies.

[1648jon]

With limited experience with boats and some of the guys only have a couple hours on a hammer what would you suggest for an upgrade in regards to:

Ease of operation and dependability.
Quality and parts availability.
Performance/fun factor.
Inboard/outboard.

I like the Top speed 2 but the outboard engines are expensive.
I like the areomarine Mean machine as well but do not know much about catamaran or boats in general.That seems like a big boat for a .18?

What are the largest difference in the tunnel hull boats and the cats i realize one is o/b and the other inboard but thats pretty much it.

thanks a lot for any help.
Terry

[BoatDoc]

tunnels are typically wider and have a shallower tunnel than a cat. a good 2nd boat in my opinion would be an inboard mono, say...a .21 size. there's some support equipment you'd have to get, like a starter, but you'd need that for an O/B too. just my two pennies worth

[Icman69]

If it is really a play boat Get a Cat they are easier to drive than a mono in my opinion I have two Cats and one Mono I like the Cats better. I have an Aero Marine Cyclone and a Supercat Aero marine makes a great hull. I will not comment on the engines since I only run gas set-ups.

[Ron Olson]

You can pick up a lot of K&B outboards on eBay reasonably priced, some new in the box so don't just limit yourself to the OS so you might be able to save yourself $100.00 or more.

[1648jon]

I have actually been watching e-bay and had a question for you boat guru's.

what is the difference in the 3.5 with a black carb and one with a gold one.

Terry

[Ron Olson]

Usually the black carb is on the older models with the smaller 12mm crank. The gold carbed versions have a 13mm crank. The carb's bore I believe is that same as it has to be to run in the stock class which has a maximum bore requirement.

[BoatDoc]

the bore of the black carb is .265", the gold carb is .312", and the red is .345". the newer models do have the bigger 13mm crank though. which is causing me problems with rebuilding an older model that i have...as i have to replace a few extra parts. they quit manufacturing a lot of stuff for the 12mm crank engines. all the carbs are interchangable as the OD of the throat has stayed the same over the years.

[Ron Olson]

I had a chance to pick up a toolbox full of K&B 3.5 OB parts but I would have had to take a bunch of other junk along with it for a lot more money than what I was willing to dish out so there are parts around yet, just harder to find.
Thanks for correcting me on the carb bores. Do you know anything about the purple carbs? They must be rare as I've only seen pictures of them.

[BoatDoc]

never even heard of the purple ones, i think i know where i could get info about them...or even get one in my hand if i ask nicely.

[Ron Olson]

Oops! We got off track here. I usually don't like ProBoat's boats but after looking at their new Cat, it doesn't look too bad. As with most RTR boats, it could use a few tweaks here and there but not anything that wouldn't cost more than a few dollars to fix.
So far the reports on the Mean Machine 18 aren't as good as what I was hoping for it as when I saw the pre-production boats I thought that it was going to be a great boat even for its higher price than its competition. Reports are from people that may or not have previous experience with boats so that makes the early reports hard to know if the boat does have issues or not. If things aren't good, it could hurt the future RTR boats that Remy and the gang are working on. What those are, he didn't say or elaborate on.