Help with prop selection 185 Sport

[10sport185]

Hey guys,
i have a 2010 185 Sport with V6. Mostly used in lakes, we tube, wakeboard and kneeboard and just cruise a lot. I tore up my stock alum prop last year and got a 19P High Five. I'm really not impressed with the performance, it cruises at a higher RPM and almost has a slipping type feel to it especially when taking off from being stopped. Feels kinda like a slipping trans or clutch in a car where the RPMs climb gradually but you don't feel much in the way of performance, it's a really weird feeling and hard to explain. Anyway, I'm wondering if I should change pitch of the High Five to like a 21 or should I get something different, 4 blade or other... Any real world suggestions would be great! TIA.

 

[WazzuCMGrad]

Hi there: Have you tried looking through Mercury Marine's prop selector tool? You can provide data that you know to get recommendations on the best prop for you based on how you use your boat, along with engine/weight data amongst other things.

On an aside, I put a 16x11p on my 205 for a number of testing reasons, and found that it jumped to speed quickly (expected) but that top speed was about 20mph! Excellent wakeboard wake, but really painful if you had to make even a medium-length run anywhere!

www.mercurymarine.com

Good luck!

 

[10sport185]

Thanks Wazzu, I used the Mercury Prop Selector and one of its recommendations was the High Five 19P, which wasn't good at all. That's why I was hoping for someone's real world experience..

 

[hblock72]

I have a 2007 185 sport with 4.3 V6 TKS and assuming we have the same drive ratios, I imagine you need a 21p instead of the 19p. I have a 21p high five prop on my boat and could not be happier with the performance of the prop on my boat for what I do (watersports). With a light load on smooth water, I can just "tickle" the rev limiter. I imagine with the 19p you'd be able to get into the rev limiter pretty hard. Have you checked your WOT (wide open throttle rpm)? This is really the only way to know for sure if you need to be going up or down in prop pitch. I'm not sure what's going on with the slip you're talking about as one of the advantages of the 5 blade prop is it's "grip" on the water, thus the better holeshots. The high five prop does have some adjustable vent tabs around the circumference of the prop hub. They should have come with fully closed inserts in them. (mine are completely closed) The idea here is you can "tune" the acceleration slip by installing different sized holes in the vents to allow exhaust gas to flow over the blade and allow for some slip to help the engine rev faster on holeshots. If these tabs were somehow missing to too big of holes installed it could possibly cause the problem you're describing. Just food for thought.

 

[WazzuCMGrad]

Thanks Wazzu, I used the Mercury Prop Selector and one of its recommendations was the High Five 19P, which wasn't good at all. That's why I was hoping for someone's real world experience..

What were the other ones, if I might ask? When I did the selector process, it actually told me I should be down in the 16-18p range based on engine and how much weight I typically have in the 205 when wakeboarding.

A couple of key questions to think about:
1) What is your loading situation when riding? Are you at or near capacity, or lightly loaded? If you're lightly loaded, you're right that a 19p is probably too heavy in hole shot, and not enough for top end.
2) What are you hoping to do, top-end wise? If you're looking for 40+ out of your boat, again a 19p probably is too much bite.

Sounds to me like you want more top-end (the RPM comment relative to speed), and would trade some hole shot to get it.

I've got a 20p 4-blade aluminum, and felt like it was a nice balance between the hard dig of a smaller pitch, and the top end I had with the stock 21p 3-blade.

I truly hope this helps. Props are really tricky, and there isn't a single solution that's good at everything. You'll probably have to decide which end of the hole shot v. top end spectrum you want to be at.