About our new 2016 Spirit Of America “Terminator” Top Fuel Jet Boat

The above hull was our first Rogers Dragstar built in 1997. This hull was used for the first prototype for our 2015 “Terminator” hull. The new boat has been totally redesigned and has new stepped bottom with tunnel vents that progressively open as speed increases to control lift at high speeds.  The hull will be 100% composite including the stringers.

We ran this boat 120 passes, over three years, with no problems. Additional updates to the original design resulted in a top speed of 153.9 M.P.H. and 5.42 Sec. E.T. in 1000 Feet. As of this time, no other jet boat has run this fast in the Lucas Oil Drag Boat National Series.

Our past Crew Chief Rob Wiley was driving in the above Photo.

This is the new 2015 “Terminator”plug mold for our new  “Spirit Of America” Top Fuel Jet boat. The tunnel hull is the 4th generation of changes to the old original Rogers  Dragstar design. It features a new deck, transom and gunnels. Additionally, it has the latest stepped tunnel bottom design and the narrowed keel. The changes are expected to greatly improve performance and aerodynamics resulting in increased speed and safety.. We designed the new hull for speeds up to 180 MPH.

This is the bottom of our new mold plug for our “Terminator” Top Fuel Jet hull.

This is the first Terminator Lake Race hull produced. 5/28/2015

Our new billet jet drive. For added safety.

.Shown above it the new Spirit Of America on a shake down run in early 2016 at 144.7 MPH.

 

Our  first prototype boat was produced originally by Rogers Custom Boats in the mid 1970,s.  Roger started with the original 18 ft. Bonneville hull and updated it to the newer tunnel hull design. It was designed  for high horsepower applications such as Top Fuel Jet and engineered to be less prone to hooking, barrel rolls and blow-overs than the Placecrafts, Eliminators, and TPR,s. 

Our new “Terminator” hull design incorporates some of Rogers original design with a stepped bottom, narrowed keel, and tunnel vents that proportionally open as the speed increases preventing the hull from entrapping too much air and becoming a airplane!

We choose this hull design because of it’s safety record compared to the other hulls used in the class. This design was used because it is was the only jet hull with a keel built to correctly fit the opening used in the Berkeley (R) Race ( 6  degree) intake.  This intake provides more water to the  jet pump than any after market 5 degree intake and uses a jet intake loader with 6 mounting holes instead of 4!   This type intake loader is much stronger than the 4 bolt loaders used in the 5 degree aftermarket intakes.  Many 4 bolt loaders have broken in  much slower boats causing spectacular end over end crashes!!   It is a important safety item with all our horsepower and speed!

  Additionally, the new hull has our newly designed  aluminium 6061 T6 billet jet drive suction housing to prevent past accidents involving suction piece failure of the stock cast units. Also, we will be using the new improved Dominator jet drive bowl with improved machining design and their new hot isostatically pressed  casting (H.I.P.) which literally squeezes porosity and voids out of the casting increasing strength and fatigue resistance to almost that of a billet. The new bowl will be available to the public from American Turbine Jet Drives in about a month.

   Furthermore, our modified Rogers keel design, works at all speeds and power, unlike the Daytona and TPR style hulls, and does not need expensive dropped keels that must be modified every time you increase the power or speed!   Also, our boat does not utilize picklefork type tunnels, because the design will often violently hook  and crash if one sponson enters the water before the other, due to wind or water conditions!      Our tunnel sponson’s start 5 feet aft of the bow only lifting the back of the boat to avoid flight and blow-overs at high speeds!  

In late 2014 we began building the new hull for 2015 with all the latest design changes built into a new mold.. The prototype hull ran a 5.42 E.T.  and 153.59 MPH back in 2012 and held the world record through 2012 and 2013.  

We used the latest aerodynamic advances employed by GM for construction of the new Corvette to decrease drag while adding down force. The hull design will be called “Terminator” and Bryan Letterly will be the test pilot. The new hull is designed for Top Fuel Jet and Top Alcohol Jets. The hull is the first new generation modified tunnel boat manufactured in 20 years specifically for the Lucas Oil Drag boat Series Top Fuel Jet class. We have designed a new billet aluminium jet drive to eliminate past jet drive suction piece failures and built the hull using all composite design using S- Fiberglass aerospace cloth which has superior tensile and impact strength than carbon fiber. Total empty hull weight is 485 lbs.

The first new hull was produced 5/05/2015 and the capsuled boat should be completed mid season 2015.

The first full test pass on our new hull in 2016, the boat ran a 5.66 E.T. at 144  MPH in 1000 feet. In Augusta Ga. the boat ran 5.50 E.T.   It will run much faster as we fine tune it.  So far the new hull is performing better than expectations! In Wheatland Mo. we ran a 5.38 and at the two last races ran a 5.40  at Parker and a 5.45 in Phoenix.  All three of these passes were legs on the Word Record in the National Series. The 5.38 pass was the quickest TFJ pass ever in the Lucas Drag Boat Series in 1000 feet.

For more info. on the new 2016 Terminator jet boats go to the upper right and click on the page:                    2016 TERMINATOR JET BOATS TECHNICAL DATA