Anyone have any experience changing the plugs on this system? If so, what kind of results did you have?
It's an interesting theory and there must be some solid engineering behind it, it's interesting that Mercury offers different diameter bleed holes and one that plugs the system off entirely saying that the hull design can have a huge impact and may require fine tuning.
I had one of my props heavily customized and that included adding the Merc style PVS vents. I ordered two or three different vent sizes, then went to the lake. I first tried all four open and got a little too much slip. She'd blow out halfway to being on pad. I put the 3/8 plugs in all four holes and thought it was perfect but after some time I decided to try and see if I could improve the hole shot a little more and pulled one plug out. Hole shot improved a bit more. So right now I've run for about the past year with one open vent and 3 plugged to 3/8".
The Etec's hot exhaust tends to melt the backside of the plugs, it doesn't change the hole size but, when I pop them out, I have to replace them with new ones.
There's a new high performance Raker out that has tune-able vents. Just uses an Allen wrench. Haven't tried one yet.
Who'd a thunk? lol Good on you for thinking outside the box and trying an unconventional way.
A guy on one of the Triton groups I'm on mentioned he read somewhere that the four stroke engines do better completely plugged up on a Triton hull. Like you I have experienced what feels like some mild cavitation just before the boat gets up completely, I thought it was me not trimming it right. After doing some light reading I'm thinking about ordering the various plugs and playing with them, just to see what happens and how they effect things.