Help me pick a prop!
 

Hey guys, I have a 97 Fountain 24CS with a 454 that has Heads, Cam and an Intake with a Holley. It has a Quicksilver Mirage 3 blade 26P and its turning out 70mph at 4900rpm with about half tank, no tabs and trimmed properly. I have seen 72 with less fuel and very calm water. The biggest issue I have is it takes way too long to plane and I feel like the prop blows out when I accelerate too quickly before it planes out.

I want to switch out to a 4 blade for quicker planing and better mid range. To make matters a tad more complicated I'm about to install some CMI E-Tops so I'm not sure what pitch and brand prop to get to have her turning at 5k rpm at full tilt... Thanks in advance!

Bueller...? Bueller...?

Im assuming you have a 1.5 ratio drive so your slip percentage of 12.97% is pretty good, as I have always heard fountains tend to be on the higher side for slip percentage. I have noticed alot of guys running hydromotives on fountains. I would try a 24p Q4x hydromotive or a 24p Bravo 1. Those should plane you out better, better acceleration, and will probably put you close to the same rpm you are at now. The 24p Bravo 1 should give you a little more rpm then the 24p hydro as the Bravo 1 is a little smaller diameter, and under pitched more like 23.3p where the hydro are closer to true pitch. But the hydromotive is a little bit better of a high x dimension (drive doesn't sit real low in the water) over the bravo 1 which is why I would imagine the fountains run them. Good luck, and if it was my boat this is where I would start, I also would give BBlades a call to get there input, and maybe there prop trial program may help you if you don't have the props handy to borrow.

Great! Thanks for the reply! I did in fact order and receive a 24P Bravo 1. I was just concerned about adding the headers and what that might do to my RPM. Do E-Tops generally add a lot of top end RPM if nothing else is changed?

What are you running now for exhaust?

Stock manifolds with captains call...

changing your exhaust wont give you enough power to worry about a prop change unless you already running 5200 with a 5250 rev limiter

Perfect, that's great news. Thanks for the replies.

Running a bravo 3 with mirage 24p on a Baja 260 with a 454... Previous 454 I was turning 5,000 Rpms running around 58-60 mph... Broke a crank so I put a new engine with same heads, intake, carb, different cam... I can only turn about 45-4600 Rpms and run about 46-48 mph... Can someone help me get some more speed out of this... Any ideas?

I personally would just wait till I got the exhaust on and then prop it to where I wanted it instead of trying to guess how much you will get from the upgraded exhaust. There are aeveral factors on how much the exhaust will gain you over stock manifolds. How big your cam is, usually stock exhaust is no good with a cam unless it's pretty mild, reversion is the issue. Heads, and your induction play a roll as well. But with CMI e tops and generally speaking probably 200rpms over stock manifolds.