Shortening stinger strut - good or bad idea?

[kookie_guy]

In the build section you can see I'm doing a proboat shockwave 26. The stinger strut I am using is from a SV27R.

So questions are....

1) Does cutting it shorter affect things in a positive/negative way?
2) Is it ok for the rudder to be in front of the prop (to the side obviously), or should I make a longer bracket so the leading/trailing edge of the prop is aligned with the prop?
3) If I should make it longer, what is the proper alignment? Leading vs trailing edge of the rudder to leading vs trailing side of the prop?

[steveo]

rule of thumb is 10% of boat length for strut of stinger, nothing wrong with rudder before the prop

[Fluid]

Sometimes you have to shorten the stinger to get the handling right. Rules of thumb are nice, but what matters is how the boat behaves. If a mono runs too loose or if it hooks in the turns, shortening the stinger will often solve both problems. Shortening the stinger effectively raises the prop out of the water, letting the rear of the hull settle and reducing/eliminating bow steering. If the boat runs fine now, don't change it. If it suffers from the above issues then cutting off 1/2" will probably help.


.

[kookie_guy]

Sweet, thanks for the help. It's pretty well at 10% right now, so we'll see how she does, and go from there.