These Lunatics Have 1500HP And No Brakes!

We’d all like to consider the latest generation of drag and drive street cars to be the upper echelons of lunacy, and while we can’t take anything away from the notion of a 2000hp street car like Adam Rogash’s Capri that debuted at MotorEx a short time ago, at least Adam can stomp on the picks and hang the ‘chutes if things ever get too hairy.

So imagine the gigantic, swinging steel pistachios you’ve got to have to take that same horsepower and shove it into a racing boat, capable of speeds of over 140mph on the water! We were so intrigued that we tagged along with Dale Heiler from Tuned By Dale to check out what makes these sea-faring sycophants tick.

Perhaps better known for his exploits in tuning high performance street cars and piloting his own twin-turbo Holden VT Commodore into the sixes, Dale Heiler has somewhat of a deft touch when it comes to loading 1s and 0s into aftermarket engine management systems.

“I’ve been doing boats for around fifteen years, alongside the automotive stuff. We started off doing ski race boats, and now circuit racing boats as well as social craft too,” he explains.

When it comes to the pyramid of maritime racing royalty, the Ski Race boats are the kings of the jungle. Essentially open cheque book builds, they’re a ‘no expense spared’ symbol of engineering and reliability, and are often hung at wide open throttle for up to an hour at a time!

The next rung down the ladder are the Circuit Racing boats, where it’s not uncommon to find small and big block V8 engines topped with roots-style superchargers shoehorned into tiny fibreglass doorstops. “A lot of these guys still run double pumper carbies or mechanical injection and magneto ignition! They’re all stuck in the 70s!” laughs Dale, who’s assisting those in the class eager to find an edge to transition to the marvels of EFI, combining his successes in the Ski Race category and with his intricate knowledge of the Haltech suite of products.

“EFI is the way to go for these guys, but a lot of them have never even tried it! They look at other guys in the class running old school carby or mechanical fuel setups and assume that’s the best way, but the truth is EFI gives them absolute control over the whole process and aids with drivability and power delivery, with the benefit of more accurate data logging. It’s basically bringing what we’ve been doing in cars for the last thirty years to circuit racing boats,” he goes on to explain.

It makes the whole relationship between his automotive and his marine tuning seem very one-sided, but as Dale explains, it’s very symbiotic and the two worlds definitely feed off one another. “A lot of the engine combos in the boats might look familiar - it’s basically like taking a big, blown engine that you’d see in a car in the hall at MotorEx or Summernats and shoving it in a boat!” he exclaims. “While the engines in the Ski Race boats are absolute top-dollar, the engine combos in the Circuit Racing class are very similar to what you’d put in a tough street car - the same blocks, crank, rods and pistons,” he adds.

Looking at footage of the boat raving it's easy to assume that the tuning process is all about maximising outright horsepower at wide open throttle, but Dale is quick to correct us and explain that the tuning process for the boats is much more like tuning a tough street car, focusing on driveability throughout the rev range.

“It’s true, at the start of the race they’ll go straight to over 7000rpm and stay there for the majority of the race, so we spend a lot of our time in the tuning window between 6-7,500rpm, but then they’ll also slow down to make the turn in the track so we’ve got to make sure it’s smooth on the way down and back up the rev range to ensure the boat is drivable,” he explains.

Check out the action from the recent Winter Spectacular at Adelaide Speedboat Club, and let us know on social media if you want us to explore the high horsepower hearts of these beasts more in a future article!