Havasu father, son boat rebuild effort packs a punch
A father and son worked for seven months together to try to do what they said was the impossible: build a lot of power into a little boat.
By JACKIE LEATHERMAN Today’s News-Herald
And judging from their testing, they did it.
“It’s been an interesting project to take a cookie-cutter boat and do the impossible with it,” said 23-year-old Brandon Carroll. “Me and my dad spent 300 hours in the boat redoing everything.”
Brandon and his father, 42-year-old Danny Carroll, co-own B&D Custom Marine at 1761 W. Acoma Blvd., across the street from West Coast Drives, which works on some of the longest and fastest boats seen on Lake Havasu.
On Friday, some of the top-performing racing boats will take to the waters of Lake Havasu to shoot for the winning poker hand in the Poker Race. With registration still ongoing, there are only two boats expected to participate out of the 126 signed up as of Wednesday afternoon that are less than 25-feet: a 21-footer out of Woodland Hills, Calif., dubbed the “Pacemaker,” and “Red Fever.”
Brandon said when a family friend came across the 24.5 foot 1989 Baja hull, the father and son team stepped up to see what they could do with it.
When they started the project, Brandon said he expected “Red Fever” to reach 90 mph.
Then they began to work on it.
The hull had to be strengthened to withstand power.
The bilge, or lower compartment, was replaced, foam was removed, and the stringers, or the boat’s support system, were replaced.
Then the 454 engine block was taken out and replaced with a 565 block, which now holds a 1,220-horsepower motor. An IMCO standoff box was installed, along with an IMCO SC drive with a 126 gear ratio, and a 1071 BDS blower.
A boat that size is not supposed to be able to handle that power, Brandon said, but it is.
They did their first water test two weeks ago to just “cruise” around and see how the “Red Fever” handled. They got up to a quarter throttle at three pounds of boost, and hit 3,700 rpm (revelations per minute) and 94 mph.
The second test: half throttle, five pounds of boost, 100 mph.
“We expected the boat to do at least 90 mph,” Brandon said. “My new expectation is the boat will do 117 mph with around eight pounds of boost.”
Friday’s Poker Run will be the first debut for “Red Fever,” which Brandon said he expects to register in future runs.
As he stood outside of his shop on Acoma Boulevard, Brandon bent down to check the year of the boat under the hull – below a phrase written on the hull’s interior that read: “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”
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