Prop Repair

[Onside135]

Trying to help a friend out. Anyone have any experience with prop repairs? Does this look repairable, will it ever be as good as new, or should he just buy a new one. It came off an '07 Wakesetter. I think it was an ACME 1235. Thanks!

 

 

 

 

[oldjeep]

Just about anything can be fixed. We use PropMD.com because they are right down the road and it seems to be the place that most of the dealers send their props.

[Murrski]

ahhh, that looks pretty beat up. For me, I'd send it to the dumpster and buy a new one.

[Dusty]

Some of the prop guys seem to work miracles, you never know til you ask. Might want to buy another anyhow, just as a back up. Has saved more than one ski day for me.

[Jody_Seal]

Wall art! Yard Art! scrap metal prices are up!

[ISP6ball]

I would use it as an end table conversation piece at the lake house, and pony up for a new one.

[GAJ0004]

I have sent the prop on my boat back to the manufacturer twice for repairs in 18 years.

I am still on the original prop. The cost will vary depending on how bad it is. They should be able to rebuild it. Do it in the offseason. It will most likely come back quicker.

[oldjeep]

You guys must not ding props very often if you would toss that. Repair is generally $110-$130. Banging them up happens often enough around here that you had better have a spare available and not be throwing away $500 props.

[Ed_Obermeier]

Totally repairable. www.midwestprop.com, they do a totally awsome job and and pretty reasonable on price.

[oldjeep]

Maybe - http://www.midwestpropeller.com/ ?

[Jody_Seal]

I see it all the time! especially on the freeway during bike week! $30,000.00 Motor cycle being hauled on a $100 trailer.

 

With the chunks out of that thin blade ACME it Ain't worth the repair.

shure their are very good prop repair shops but.... It will never be right and is slinging a blade and having catastrophic failure something one wants to experience?

I see propellers like this every week however I refuse to have something like that repaired. not worth the possibilities of down the road anguish and or future other component failures.

[A_B]

I would rather look for a nice used one that may have had a few wiggles taken out.

Replacing chunks of nibral never seemed like a good idea to me.

[Waternut]

My vote is repair. I just can't see slinging a blade that was repaired by a reputable prop shop. Aviation industry grinds out gouges like that on airplane prop blades and jet engine fan blades and those spin a whole lot faster. If you haven't slung a blade the way it is, you aren't going to sling one after it's been repaired.

 

You're probably looking at an expensive repair at around $130-$150 with those gouges but totally repairable. A real prop shop will weld that material back on, repitch the prop back to normal, and balance it good as new. Just make sure the shop has the correct dies to repair machined props. They are a different animal than the old forged props.

 

Just my 2 cents... Piece of mind costs $500 though if you're worried. I don't have any local shops that could repair that kind of prop so I personally would order a new prop to get me on the water ASAP and repair that one for use later.

[Jody_Seal]

@waternut you might to inlarge the photo of the prop! Every Blade is massively destroyed, I am pretty sure any reputable prop repair man would not even touch it!

 

@Onside135 Their are a bunch of used props on Ski it again and also on E-bay.

I sell Oj's and will quote you one at a great price. Their is also delta propeller and many other competitive dealers on the Net.

[A_B]

Acme is a "grooved" prop on the surface. I don't know how any non-acme shop would put those into new welded in place chunks. If you had all the metal there and no significant bends that would crack due to stress, I'd say yes.

 

However you decide, would be nice to let us know how it comes out. Isn't the gas tank above the prop? Jk

[Waternut]

@jody_seal The worst I see is the right blade which looks like it might have a 1/4" deep x 1" long missing and that's tapered off smoothly. All the others make it look nasty but none look like they have more than 1/8" missing. If there is more than one square inch missing from any one section of a blade, then I probably would hang it up as well but this doesn't look anywhere close to that. My eye calibration may be off but those numbers are basically what I see.

[Jody_Seal]

Like the old saying, You can lead a horse to water!

[thager]

New prop is a lot more inexpensive than new fiberglass.

[Onside135]

Thanks to everyone for your comments. Before starting this thread, I advised my friend to go buy a new one, rather then attempt a repair with this prop. @Jody_Seal's comments seemed to confirm what my own research on the thin bladed ACME props revealed, and that is that while some of the best, most efficient, and true props, they are also very thin bladed metal. This makes them easy to ding up and harder to repair.

 

Oh...and the old prop was sent off for repair last week, but I'm not sure where it went. We will see if they try and repair it.?.?

[Jody_Seal]

 

This one goes in the scrap bin!

[Waternut]

@jody_seal Wow...the scrap bin? Is it just because it's forged instead of machined? I don't have the trailing edge damage on mine but I ran my old 13x13 forged prop with leading edge damage like that for 2 years and roughly 100 hours before putting a new machined ACME prop on. Mine had clearly been welded and repaired once before too. I filed the high metal and never so much as noticed the slightest vibration. The only thing I noticed when I installed my ACME 11.5x13 was better pick up when the boat was fully loaded.

[EJOJprop]

Just to clarify, the older style props were not forged, they were cast in the same manner the CNC machined props are cast today. We still offer hand finished propellers as well as our CNC machined propellers, both start off life cast in the same manner. The hand finished parts are cast from CNC machined master patterns and are cast as near "net parts". Meaning the casting is much thinner and closer to a finished part. The part is then cleaned up by hand on a buffing machine. The CNC castings start out much thicker in order to have material to machine. The last process for each is balancing, that is why even the machined props show signs of buffing on the back of the blades.

 

As for the orignal prop shown for repair, the issue is not how much of the blade is missing it is how bad are the blades bent. Adding material to the blade is the easy part, insuring the blade is not bent into the hub is the issue. There is also no way to put the tool path, the lines in the prop, back into a repair, even if you send it back to whomever built it.

 

Better pick up with a 11.5" pitch prop over a 13" prop would be expected.

[Jody_Seal]

@Waternut What you dont see on this three blade is how bad the trailing edge of the propeller is chewed up the length to each blade. As Eric stated also about a blade that is bent this one has a blade bent deep into the root.

 

@EJOJprop Eric Glad to have you on the site. thanks for the information.

[Waternut]

@EJOJprop Good information. Out of curiosity, is there a benefit for the machining marks on the prop or is it more for cost savings without a lot of performance increase? We found that a scuffed surface on a jetski prop provided more grab out of the hole but a polished prop was a little better on the top end. I know the two props work in slightly different ways but do the tooling path lines increase the grab/decrease prop slip out of the hole on a boat prop?

[EJOJprop]

The lines are a function of the tool path. I have recently made some changes to the tool paths to test what, if any performace is gained or lost. May see a different look soon.