In this video you’ll learn how the Hydrofin hydrofoil system works, all of its parts and pieces, as well as the extreme value your pontoon boat, can expect to benefit from. If you’re wondering how the Hydrofin system attaches to the boat, if it will work on your boat, if it’s a fixed system vs mechanical, or how the system achieves the 40% lift that your pontoon boat needs then be sure to watch the video below! Want to speak to someone about installing Hydrofin on your pontoon boat? Click here to schedule a call.
Hydrofin System Overview Video Transcription
Hi my name is Jason Minor with Hydrofin, and I just wanted to introduce you to the product, we’re getting some product in now from our manufacturer, and so just want to introduce you to all the parts that make up the system. Because there’s been a lot of questions about how it works, how it attaches to the boat; you know, how much lift these foils can provide, those types of questions.
And so my intent today is to answer some of those questions, and so we may not get through all of them, but I’ll start out with probably the most exciting part – and that is the Hydrofoils themselves.
And so these foils, as you can see here, this is a-, this is a pretty large wing. Okay, and so this is the Main Foil System that mounts just forward of the center-of-gravity on the boat, okay. And so we’ll get some cool pictures and some things like that, but you can see what some of the angles look like on this.And so this again, this is the main foil, that goes, just for the center of gravity on the boat. There’s actually two of these, so there’s a right and a left, and again, this mounts for Double Pontoon boats.
And then there’s also foils that mount in the back of the boat, so these mount below the waterline in the back of the boat. Okay, and so, let’s talk about how all these parts kind of come together, and I’m going to start out by talking about how it actually attaches to the boat itself, to the pontoon logs, for the Main Wing System, okay. And so what we have here is, I call this-, I call this the ‘base plate’, okay. And so as you can see here, this takes the same curvature as the log of the pontoon.And so there’s, we’ve got plates made for 24-inch pontoon, 25″ – 27″ logs; so regardless of what size log you have, we’ve got plates that fit perfectly to those log sizes, okay. And the other thing that you’ll notice here, is that we’ve got-, we’ve got all these holes that are drilled and this gives us the ability to attach the foil using another plate to this. So the first thing that we’re going to do, is we’re going to use a structural adhesive, the product that I’m using currently, it’s made by Lord – this is the 852 product.
This is not something that you can buy like Home Depot, or anything like that. This is literally it’s got the same characteristics as welding, and we’ve got such a large surface area across this plate here, that it works very well. We’re going to talk about how to properly attach this plate, using the Lord product in a separate video. But I did want to just to introduce that, because there is some surface preparation and there’s some things that you have to be aware of, and that you have to do, to actually make sure that that bond is secure and proper, okay.So, the next one is introduced to you here, okay. So you’re gonna have to kind of visualize with me a little bit, but so this bracket mounts to this plate, okay. I’m going to get into a little bit of detail here, but what I want to show you here on this bracket, is that one of the questions that we commonly get is, you know, “will this work on my boat?” “I’ve got an 18-foot boat with 50 horsepower motor”, “I’ve got a 24-foot bow with a 150 on it”, and the weight ranges the horsepower, and the speeds of those boats are all different. And so, how can-, or will- this system work for my particular boat?
And the way that we were able to accomplish this, we created basically a universal system to work with any pontoon boat, is because we are able to change the angle-of-attack that this main foil hits on the water; and the same is true actually for the rear foils as well. Okay, and so I’ll show you how this works, I’m gonna-, I’m going to flip this over here real quick; and what you can see is, is that these screws here, allow us to actually change the angle of this bracket on the front side. Okay, so I can actually change this in one-degree increments. I don’t know if you can see it on the camera but, there’s these little divots right here. And so I can actually change the wings at one-degree increments. And so what we’ve got is, we’ve got a chart that we’ll post online as well, that helps us – the installers – actually determine how much lift is required for your boat. And so we can-, we can generate lift in excess of 2500 pounds at 25 miles an hour, and so we’ve got this chart that basically says, you know,
“How big is your boat? How much does it weigh? What is your horsepower? What is your top speed?”, all those things.So we take all of those into account to determine again, what-, what angle, this is – this is mounted, okay. So basically, once we make that determination, then we go ahead and we tighten these screws up here on the back, and we put, of course, Loctite on these screws so that they stay in place, we haven’t had any issues with that. And then once we-, once we tighten those screws, and once this main plate is fastened on the boat, then we attach-, we attach this plate here. And as you can see, I’m going to go ahead and just do this quickly because I think it’ll give you an example of, you know, just how quick and simple this is, once the base plate is attached.
And I want to show you something else here also. These screws, all the hardware that we use is stainless steel hardware, and so all of the plates, and all of the material-, other materials are in aircraft-grade aluminum. So you’re not going to have any issues with corrosion, or rust, or anything like that.
And so, but the hardware itself, the screws that we’re using are all stainless steel. Okay, so one of the other questions that we commonly get about this plate, is that it gives the impression at first glance, that these-, that these screws here may penetrate the pontoon logs. And I just wanted to go ahead and again, flip this over to show you that. So those screws, they’re quarter-, they’re half-inch screws, actually. So the first plate is a quarter-inch thick. Again, aircraft-grade aluminum, same thing here, so this is another quarter-inch. So we’ve got a total-, a total thread of a half-inch deep and, but as you can see here, it does not-. So here’s those screws, and it does not actually touch the hole of the boat.
And then of course you’ve got the Lord structural adhesive product also that is mounted on this bracket. So you’re not going to have to worry about any leakage or anything like that on your boat.Okay, so that’s-, that’s how that works. And then, what we do, is we can go ahead and just lift this up here. And then this foil just simply slides into those grooves. We’ve got a plate, I mean – I’m sorry – a hinge pin that inserts into-, into that-, into that hinge. And then we’ve got some-, we’ve got just some little – basically it’s a plastic, you know, sleeve that holds that pin in there. And this is the leading edge so it’s not going to come out anyway.
So, so that’s how the main foils, attach to the log of the boat, okay. The other part then that we have is, so we’ve got-, we’ve got the main foils attaching in two different locations of course, one part of it is on, this is on log side of the boat. And then we’ve got what we call a strut that actually attaches to the wing tip and goes up to the deck of the boat, and I’ve got that assembled here already. And so we’ll go ahead and I’ll show you what that looks like. So I’m going to spin this around here, but we’ve got-.
So this is-, this is, you know, the part that attaches to the foil itself.This is the-, we call this the ‘strut’, and then this is a mounting bracket that we’ve created to actually attach to the deck of the boat. And so it goes, just like this. Okay. So what we’re gonna do here is, we’re actually taking the load and we’re distributing the lifting force across the hole of the boat, as well as up this strut into the deck of the boat. And so, I’ll just show you one other thing, so at the top of the deck of the boat, so you have to imagine if this is, if we’re kind of running forwards and backwards, okay this is going to be streamlined through the water. What we do is, we take a-, this is a piece of stock aluminum, it’s two-inch-by-two-inch square, it’s a quarter inch thick. And what we do is, we actually put that at the top of this strut here, and that slides in there and then, that actually also attaches then to the top deck of your boat, okay. So, that’s how the main foils attach to the boat.
So again, there’s-, there’s really three main components to it.There’s the foil itself, there is the strut in the attaching hardware that goes there, and then also, the-, the main bracket. And so, the rear foils-, I’ll go ahead and jump to the rear foils real quick. So they are very simple, there’s really just two parts that make up the rear foils. And so we’ve got, similar to this structural bracket here, we would use the adhesive on the backside of this product, or the backside of this part here. And then we would attach the foil to – just these four bolts here – to this bracket once that structural adhesive is in place and cured. And so that’s-, that’s the entire system, that’s what makes up the system.
And so, the next thing I wanted to explain – because there’s been a lot of questions on this – is that, you know, “How does this system operate? Is it fixed? Do the foils go up and down…”, because I know that in one of the videos that we had, we actually illustrated foils being raised and lowered. And that is something that we created, we felt like there was initially going to be a need for that; and after doing extensive testing on the system, what we realized is that the foils didn’t need to be as deep in the water as what we originally designed for.
And so for that reason, we got rid of – although we created it – we got rid of the hydraulic strut system, and so what we’re using now is just this fixed strut system. And the reality is, this is a much better system because there’s no moving parts, there’s nothing that can break, and so that’s a great benefit to the system as well; as at once it’s installed on your boat, there’s nothing that you have to worry about, there’s nothing that you have to do maintenance on or change or anything like that. It literally is mounted to your boat, and you go out, and you ride and drive your boat, and just enjoy the better benefits of it.
So thanks again for watching this today. What I wanted to do is just introduce you to the Hydrofin System, how it attaches to the boat, the different parts. Also want to let you know, that we’ve got some additional videos that are going to be released soon. We purchased a demo boat, we’re going to actually install this system on the demo boat. We’ll show you the entire installation process, as well as take before-and-after performance metrics so that you can see exactly what it does for that boat.
So please subscribe if you’d like to see those videos, and we’ll see you next time.
Thank you.
