What Are Boat Propellers?
It is important for you to have the right boat propeller in order for your boat to have a long engine life and great overall performance. But there is always no right boat propeller. If you are planning to change your boat and boat engine, then you need to make some changes on the boat propellers as well. If you will use the wrong boat propeller, the performance of your boat will be affected, and the engine of the boat will be damaged fast.
Every time you will be buying a boat and boat engine as a package, you will also receive the boat propeller as part of the pre-delivery rigging process. But you need to make sure that you will be asking the dealer about this. But there might be some changes if you own the boat. The dealer will provide you with a boat propeller depending on the average load of the boat. But this important factor in choosing a boat propeller might be affected if you will add heavy items.
The pontoon boats and outboard-powered houseboats are some of the boats that can accumulate heavy loads. You need to know that the operating range of your boat engine will be affected by some changes in the altitude. If the engine of your boat is propped for sea-level operations, then you need to get the right boat propeller if you will use it in high-altitude waters so that the engine will be running within its normal range. You will need to re-prop in order to have these changes.
The goal of changing some parts of the engine is to make sure that the engine will reach a certain rpm. The top speed of the engine will range with an 800 to 1000 rpm.
In order for you to understand the topic clearly, you need to make sure that you will take note on some other terms about the boat propeller.
Pitch – this is the theoretical distance that the boat propeller will move forward or backward in a whole revolution.
Diameter – refers to the straight line distance from the center of the hub to the tip of the boat propeller blades multiplied to two.
Cupping – this is the curl at the trailing edge of the boat propeller blade. This is being used by the engineers to increase the boat propeller blade’s pitch giving it more grip on the water.
Slip – this is associated with the pitch. The distance that the boat propeller will be moving in one revolution will be affected by the fact that it will be losing some distance because of some slippage. Based on the use and design of the boat propeller, it will typically have 10 to 30 percent slippage. If you want to learn more about boat propellers, the can visit some websites on the internet.