Advice for my ballast on my Sanger V215

This is how I weigh my boat now and I love it.

I want to keep the same weight, but the issue I have is I have so much lead in the boat I can't trailer it without taking the lead out. Or run the boat for cruising with out the extra weight. Plus, just sometimes, others ask me to turn down the wake. LOL! Even after I empty the stock ballast and I am left with just lead, the wake is still pretty good. So my question to you all is what do I do to reduce the lead? Below are my dimensions for my lockers. For now I am just interested in changing the rear ballast. I will attempt something for the bow later.

Thanks for any advice or help! One thing that will suck for sure about lead vs bags is, I will lose all of the storage I have in those lockers.

Dave, The Pro Shop in Longview Washington is the Sanger dealer in Western Washington. On the V215 they actually have an option where they run bags under the floor, outside the stringers. I think it adds around 500#'s a side and the weight is distributed very well front to back as it runs from the rear up to the windshield. I don't know much about how they do it. It might be worth calling them and seeing if they can give you a quick rundown on the system. I would do that system, replace the rear hard tanks with the biggest bags possible and then leave lead in the bow for bow weight. I bet you could get away with less than 500#'s of lead total.

I never thought about being able to go under the floor. If that is possible that would be the perfect solution!

That would give you 500 each side under the floor, ~600 in each rear locker and 900-1000 in the bow. That is fairly even weighted, would increase your ballast from 2216 to 3000-3200 all the while getting rid of 800 pounds of lead. It would also give you a way to fill 1100#'s on one side for surfing with all the weight hidden.

Under the floor would be good. I run allot of lead also. Mine are sbc valve cover size about 50lbs each so they arent hard to move when I go on a long trip. I've thought about under the floor many times. Havent really looed into it though. Was waiting to put anoter year or two on the boat and do a total overhaul and change all my cables, carpet etc and check into tearing up the floor.

When I talked to the guys at the Pro shop they said you don't need to tear up anything. They made it sound like there are little door or hatches with access under the floor.

How cool, hidden under floor sacs!

Hmmmm - I wonder if they can do that on a DLX?

Seems it would have the same open area on the outside of the stringers

Hate N Pain who posts on here knows more about it than I do. He may be able to give some insight. Here is The Pro Shop's website. They probably know more than anyone about Sanger's.

http://teamproshop.com/

Brett you pretty much know about as much as I do. I've talked to them about doing some pretty intricate systems in my boat but have yet to pull the trigger. The economy being what it is makes it a little tougher to spend the dough. Bretts dead on though they know their stuff for sure. Don and Jason are the people to speak to down there.

Have they done it before?

Plenty, they have a V237 right now with their system in it.

Here it is V237

Very cool, now we (I) need to figure out how they did that? One thing that I don't like about my Sanger is that for a 21.5 boat, it seems to have alot less storage then other 21.5 boats, so this would be a money solution!

Call them Dave. They are really nice guys and if they have a free second they will probably be able to spare a few minutes to let you know how they do it.

The only reason I didn't go with a V215 is that I wanted almost or all of my wakesurf ballast hidden and easily switchable and hopefully no or not a lot of lead. I would re-consider the v215 if this works. I wonder why sanger left large areas under the floor?

I did the math and a custom locker sac built to spec (roughly 800) and the custom under deck (500) so a total of 1300 for surfing, could be a great wave? Can you do this on a v230?

Yeah it can be done on any of the V drives, not sure about the D Drives but likely.

Duffy you can get a 750 in that rear locker easily. I do it all the time.

Dave, the Sanger has more storage than most boats its size but you're right that the hard tanks do take up a bunch of space. One of the reasons I didnt go with them. I'm sure they consider their Triple Under Floor ballast some what proprietory so they may not be super eager to share how its done.

Does the 750 fit well? Are the above dimensions correct?

The above dimensions are really close; I just measured this out on Wednesday. The tank dimension is accurate. If you where to take out the hard tank and replace it with a fat sac, I would treat that space as L45xW25xH17. The 17 number is from the floor to the bottom of the gunwale (gel coat) I should have taken a picture.

Hatepain, are you saying if I pull out the hard tank I can install a 750lbs bag in that spot? If so that would be great.

Duff, yeah it fits no sweat and I've even thrown partially filled 400's on top. Maybe only 150-200 extra be more! I do 450 lead with the 750 now.

So yes Dave if you pull the hard tank you can replace it with the 750.

When I was shopping for boats the small compartments was the only reason I went with the avy instead of the v215. I switch from goofy to regular at least a few times a day and I don't want to move lead. My buddy broke his finger last year moving lead and I don't want that to happen to me I don't think you can get much more than 750-800 or so pounds of water in the compartment unless those dimensions are off. The 750 may fit pretty well but i'm guessing your loosing some LB's because of limited space. I love the sanger v215 and if this mod works that would be awesome!

What's under the the floor in the v-drive area? My last boat I just unsrewed the floor and gained like 10 more inches of height. It was just a simple piece of plastic.

(Message edited by duffymahoney on December 11, 2009)

Broken fingers aren't that bad

Hmm don't know whats under the floor but I'm guessing floatation.