Skeg Guard

[kiloil]

Do you any of you have Skeg Guard? I understand the reasoning in protecting the skeg, but isn't purpose of the skeg is to flex under a heavy hit? It appears that if you have a skeg guard your almost certain to break the skeg by the design of it?

 

[Gofirstclass]

From what I know, the Skeg Guard was designed to rebuild/replace the original skeg when it was knocked off by a strike against a rock, etc., not to protect the factory skeg.

 

[childst]

My wife hit a shallow spot in our old 210 Select. It busted up the skeg pretty good. When I took it to the shop, they gave me two options. They said I could either fix the whole lower casing which by his estimates was going to be 2-3k or buy a skeg guard and install it to hide the broken unsightly skeg for $125. Of course option 1 would have been an insurance claim, but still I had a $500 deductible. I chose option 2. It looked great after it was installed. He did mention some people put them on to protect the skeg also.

 

[Lazy Daze]

The skeg's main purpose is to protect the prop from minor hits. If there's no chance of hitting something, you can run with a broken skeg with no problems. You're correct - if you put the guard on there, and happen to hit something, there's a much greater chance of breaking the skeg off AT A PLACE THAT CAN'T BE EASILY FIXED. 99 times out of a 100, when a skeg is broken off, a new one can be welded back on. But there has to be enough material left to weld to - the skeg guard would usually cause the skeg to break off to close to the gear housing making the lower unit unrepairable.

In Childst case, something may have got lost in transmission - typically if there's enough material left to put a skeg guard on, then a new skeg could have also been welded on. The price you reported would not be for "fixing" the lower unit, it would be for "replacing" it.

 

[66pony]

i would also be careful as to what material the skeg guard is made of. If it is stainless or the like, no only will it be stronger than the aluminum skeg, but you could be promoting premature failure secondary to corrosion.

 

[childst]

Thanks for clarifying Lazy Daze. That is correct. My other option was to have it welded. However in my case, he said the angle and the degree in which my skeg was broke, he would be afraid it would break off again if it was welded. So I just went with the cheaper option. Ended up trading the boat 2 weeks later anyways for my new to me 240DA.

 

[kiloil]

The skeg is made from 316 stainless steel. My point exactly as the instructions are to drill thru the skeg and attach it with there hardware. I think this is asking for the skeg to break off at that point.