What PITCH on a 185br ???

[por2gezo]

Hey guys,

Im in the market for a new prop for my 01 / 185 and am weighing out my options. The Propeller that I damaged looked to be a 14x23 which Im guessing is a 23 pitch.(stock I believe for boat)


With this propeller the boat performed well at high speeds and seem to plane out okay, however towing and pulling a skier was a nightmare … inconsistent speeds and was really hard to drive.

Any recommendation on what I should do if I want a good all around prop that will ride nice, give me good fuel economy and allow to pull a skier/wakeboarder easier …

 

[quailrunner]

This is not an easy question... First - the 14 x 23 (3-blade) is the stock prop. If you switch to a 4-blade, you should likely drop to 21-pitch, and you may want to go up to a 14.5 (both recc.s from my mechanic). He, however, was not crazy about this idea; "the boat was designed for the prop it came with". With your old prop damaged (how?), you probably cannot have it checked, but I was experiencing the same issues last fall when I took the boat in to have it winterized. I mentioned this to the mechanic, and asked about a 4-blade. His response, just from looking at the prop (it looked fine to me): "Let me get your prop reshaped first; you hit something with it and the blades are bent"

He sent it out over the winter, and $54 later, I have a substantially more powerful boat which will pull up a 230-lb skier (3 adults in the boat, full of fuel) with no trouble at all and gets clearly better fuel economy. There are multiple listings on this topic; take a look around. You will see many opinions.

 

[blaster]

I'm guessing the 23" prop is a 3 blade aluminum? What is the max rpm's at wide open throttle? It's tough to find a prop which gives good low speed handling and high speed performance. It's difficult to make a specific reccomendation without more imformation. You may consider dropping in pitch and going to stainless. This will give you a better hole shot without losing too much top speed. You also could go to a 4 or 5 blade but top speed will suffer a little more.

 

[por2gezo]

Prop suffered some damage !

No im just weighing out my options before I have it replaced

 

[quailrunner]

Yeouwch! That's a chunk of junk...