ROTAX454

Continuing the discussion from the Awesome pics thread.
Quote from Gary Cook:
Props back then werent as good as they are now that being said a bravo 4 blade was a good all around prop merc 4 blade outboard cleavers were fast and thats about it.
Back then thats what a lot of the super cat light guys used was outboard and 4 blade quad 4
I raced with both depending on how the water was and i tested with a ton of props that werent as good as theses two i ran .


Yes the outboard 4 blade cleaver will work so will the 3 blades i tried the 3 blades ran ok speed but handle wasent great.

And it was real fun to get on plane with 3 blades.

Like i said in the above post x height was the biggest key to speed but the trade off was a bad low speed hop you have to make the prop surface to get rpm.

A tunnel tab would have helped the low speed hop and if you can believe it i shouldent even say this maybe a touch more speed.

My boat now looses 4 to 5 miles per hour with .250 to .500 drop in drive height depending on drive trim angle it goes from 94 to 90 or so.
The water speedo picks up 5 miles per hr when its at its lower setting the water speedo is dead on to my gps speedo at the higher drive height .

So that tells you what water pressure is doing without even putting a pressure gage on it.

Plus my old boat had no cabin and weight moved around i also talked to george lender a lot about things to change he is the guy who made the first chris cats and sparky at vicious had a lot to do with making it run the way it did.

ROTAX454

I do agree that Sparky Olsen is an authority on set-up practices on the 31 hull. I have had discussions with Sparky on this very subject.

One of the points he made was the fact that the Bravo transom location on the Awesome 31's was not consistant. Therefore, each owner has to do his own math and measure the prop shaft to hull dimension himself to determine the X for that particular boat.

He also stated that moving the transom mounts closer together (1" ) does improve outdrive performance.

Sparky and I had many conversions related to the tunnel tab. We will save that for another thread. What I am saying is, get the outdrive and prop dialed-in, then work on a tunnel tab.

ROTAX454

Back to an earlier question Gary, can a sportmaster (or should I say speedmaster) lower fit on a Bravo upper? see pic

You stated that you have used an outboard cleaver previously. Was this on a bravo lower? Guess I am confused. Is there not a mismatch from the lower bullet area to the cleaver center area of the prop? see pic

Or is there a cleaver style bravo prop? Guess what I mean is a bravo prop with the very pointed sharp ends to the blades?

gary cook

No a speedmaster lower wont bolt onto a bravo .
I had regular bravos with hydro nose cones.
The prop i ran was merc outboard prop small hub but that worked ok on the bravos the same style prop you have pictured but those are for a speedy i think.
Sparky and i traded props back and forth back then testing he had the 32 vicious with the 300 hundreds on it .
Sparks boat would run if i remember right 103 -104 and i think it ran the best with my labbed 32 or 34 cleavers i think 107