2025 R8 Surf Questions - HELP!!!

[RFordLakeLife]

Where to start... New to me 2025 R8 Surf with the Monsoon430 and Merc outdrive: Great boat, just looking to fine tune a few little details.

Questions are numbered so you can answer one or all of them.

1. Surf wave: I have been playing with the wave and I would say that its decent but I feel like I still have room to improve. I have been running front ballast full, and rear surf side ballast 25-50% and non surf side rear empty. running 11.8 mph: the trim tabs deploy the non surf side 100% and the outdrive trim is at 16%: when I lower the trim to drop the nose its makes the Cruise control struggle to maintain, like its not enough of a struggle to keep speed so its able to gain speed and have to back off and then sea saw up and down. When we had more rear ballast and more evenly weighted in both rear tanks the wave was shorter and steep.

2. Trim tabs - when running in cruising mode are the trim tabs limited to 15%. With the seating layout we always have more people on the port side, the port trim tab will only deploy to 15%.

3. Performance mode. in the watersports screen there is a trailer and performance mode. Any guidance on that? is it just throttle response?

4. Aft Bilge: The pop out breaker for the aft bilge will not re set unless there is enough water in the bilge to cover the pump and then it re-sets and pumps out. turns off then at some point in the near future the breaker pops again. I'm guessing there might be friction or corrosion in the pump that it can overcome once submerged? And its in a TERRIBLE place to replace. Yes warranty covers but getting dock side service is a challenge this time of year.
5. When I fill up with gas I get an engine alarm. J1939: SPN 96 - FMI 4: seems like the full fuel level causes an error in the sender. once around 5% of fuel is burned the alarm stops and fuel gauge returns to working properly.

6. Garmin Fuel setup - Even when the fuel gauge is working properly the gal remaining and range does not work. is this a tank setup issue inside the Garmin system?

7. Prisma tower - seems like this tow point is rated the same as the ski pilon at 1,000#. any reason not to tow tubes with the tower?

8. Garmin screens: the screens are good but Its very cumbersome that they power off every time you turn the boat engine off and then they take a while to power on when turning the key on. When doing watersports and changing riders, ballast, lighting etc. Any guidance or advice? powering up the engine ecu just to get the boat features available seems like a miss IMO.

[fsts2k]

I wish I had more help to provide. I run with the factory settings of steep or mellow and have not played with much else.

How are you seeing the trim tab location? On my boat I have the buttons but have never seen indicators.

[AsLan7]

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So glad you found us RFLL....

Hopefully some R8 surf owners will chime in shortly to your questions.

Any pics?

And welcome aboard mate.

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[Norris_Boating]

So in relation to the Garmin setup, Garmin offers a lot of fuel monitoring that require sensors that Cobalt doesn't natively put in the boat. You would have to add the after market. Also includes things like air temp sensor, at least from 2019 on.

For the Garmin screens, if you turn the engines off, then flip the key back to accessory mode (one turn) the Garmin screens should stay on and the engines off. At least this is how mine works. Also download active captain from Garmin, and connect it to your screens. I know after about 2 years they launched a firmware update that drastically increased the speed of the boot up for my Garmin screens.

Performance mode: on my R7, performance mode means, if my ballast are still draining, I can put that on and jump up on plane without waiting for them to finish draining. It is a great feature, not sure how it actually works on the newer R series. My Performance mode makes adjustments to trim angle and surf trims to maximize getting on plane.