Stainless Steel Props?

[Rich_S2]

Hi,
having spent £160 during the winter to have my duoprops refurbished and then dinking one on a submerged object the other week I was wondering about the merits of s/s props. Do they offer better performance? If so why and how much. The dink is small but it made me wonder if a s/s one would have faired better........

Any thoughts greatfully received............Rich

 

[Geoffs]

Hi Rich, yes I can recommend a stainless prop. I replaced my ali one last year on my 3.0L Mercruiser and it tranformed the boat. Planes and cruisers at lower revs and still pulls max rpm. The salesman gave me all sorts of talk about pitch profiles and how the handling and ride of the boat would improve. I thought it was bull***t, but he was right.

I found that ali props tend lose pitch, just have to touch a bit of mud, and an inch is gone. S/S more resilient in this respect. However if hit something hard you are going to take a lump out, there's no getting away from that. I found Steel Developments offer good value (www.steeldevelopments.co.uk).

 

[Scubadoo]

Out of interest is it the same pitch as the Alum one. I looked at Volvo Duoprops S/S but they don't quite match my orginal Alum ones i.e. Alum - A6 , S/S - C5 , the table show different pitch.

Therefore are you sure you have the same pitch if not maybe that's why you plane better etc.

RM.

 

[Geoffs]

The S/S prop is marked at 1 inch extra pitch, as you say would account for lower rpm. It still pulls 4,500 rpm at Wide open throttle so I reckon it is not over pitched. The key thing is that it does not lose pitch like an alum one. A few excursions into muddy stuff and there was a noticable loss of pitch with Al.

I guess with VP Duoprops you don't have the choice of different prop manufacturers.

 

[Guest]

Hi there,
Stainless props will get better performance because the prop can be made much finer and smoother.
The only problem comes when you hit something with one, in the case of your alloy prop it gave way and you took a piece out of it. In the case of s steel it is much tougher and will not give as easily but something else might. Hitting something with a ss prop puts more strain on everything else therefore possibly breaking something else.