z-box worth the extra?

[dskier]

Looking to put stargazer in my "99". I want to get some insight to see if the z-box is worth the extra? I ski reg. behind a MC with just stargazer and a handful of times a month behind a new MC prostar and SN 200 with zero off. I have not actually been behind anything with the stargazer/ z-box combo.

[NautiqueJeff]

Are you competing at all?

[dskier]

No-

with that said, I do notice a slight difference between zero off and the pull from stargazer. I'm just not sure the z-box will have the same effect with the older engines.....The diff. in pulls could also be the boats too!

[NautiqueJeff]

If you're not competing, I personally wouldn't worry about it.

Up to you though!

[SilentSeven]

Go chat them up on ballofspray.com Bunch of hard core course skiers there; you'll gets lots of input.

[mjp2222]

I put stargazer + zbox in my 01 with the GT40 earlier this summer. I don't compete but do like the pull better with the zbox since it is more consistent. The nice part is you can turn off the zbox by setting it to "SG", and then use it by selecting the A,B, or C zero off settings. I would buy it again, however, It is super easy to add later if you want to try SG at first without it. It's 2 screws and plugging in two connectors. (less than 10 minutes to install)

[gcam4]

I have it and like it. I don't compete either though. You will never get a ZO pull because you don't have DBW. Mechanical systems just do not respond the same. As long as you don't expect ZO, you should be good.

A lot of guys on BOS have gotten very good results with the zbox. They have even got a thread talking about the background settings. The times I get are quite good but never perfect. I believe it takes a lot of time and patience to nail the course times down. As mentioned above you don't have to use the zbox. You can pull normal SG with it.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

[jjackkrash]

I have a new Ski with ZO and one of my ski club buddies has a pristine '92 Prostar with Zbox. Zbox in an older boat may not be identical to a newer ZO boat, but it sure makes it easier to jump back and forth between them. Either way, Stargazer is a great upgrade and I'd say if you have the cash Zbox adds another layer of benefit. I doubt you will regret the purchase.

[dskier]

Thanks for all the input!! I like the point of jumping back and forth between boats. I knew the pull would not be exactly the same as the newer boats but for a second boat that will sit on a course lake, I want to put in my best option. A couple of the guys there do have newer boats and it sounds like zbox will be my best bet for consistency.

[windsurfnut]

I have zbox in my 02 SN196 and love it. I'm also one of the members on BOS that have been active with the setting thread, creating the Perfect Pass shared spreadsheet to document settings.

I don't compete, really a hack skier working my way up the line. When we put stargazer in the boat, it was nice, but I really just wanted to have all the help I could get to get through the course, so we installed Zbox. For the cost, I'd do it again. It's really not a huge cost to upgrade an older boat.

It took some dialing, and experimenting to get it right, but most of that was in the stargazer settings, not the zbox.
Here are my pointers after a a couple summers of tweaking, testing:
first - put Zbox in SG mode for all testing.
Baselines - check and double check these - if you use autocal, it will get you close, but I found as the boat slowed from each speed it would read a bit high. I took the average of 3 calibrations and set it at that.
Test in course with NO SKIER set up - if your baselines were good, you should have perfect ball times.
Next, my wife and I took turns skiing our easiest pass on the NORMAL (me) and LIGHT(her) settings, one that we could do consistent every time, and worked on the ball timing settings. We ended up lowering ball 3 a little bit. Previously to the averaging of baselines, we were all over the map with trying to get these settings right.

Then we turned back on zbox and its been bang on ever since.

I would recommend it, if you are after a ZO like pull.