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Boat is a 1999 Edgewater 20' center console that originally had a 200hp Optimax (maximum rated HP). The motor was blown when I bought the boat recently so I have no performance numbers with that motor unfortunately.
I repowered it with a 2008 Suzuki DF150 that had 138 hours logged on the internal data recorder. The prop that came with the Suzuki that I have been using is a 14.25 x 21 x 3-blade aluminum.
The boat has no trim tabs and is somewhat slow to plane (I'm estimating about 10 seconds with the motor trimmed fully down). It doesn't like to stay on plane under 4000 rpm and maxes out at 5500 rpm at about 36mph with the engine trimmed up as much as possible without ventilating (or is that cavitating?).
According to Edgewater, the boat should hit 40mph with 150hp.
I had the motor installed by a local Suzuki dealer and I would guess that it is installed high enough since once the boat is up on plane, I don't have much range before the prop starts ventilating. I also need to keep it trimmed almost fully down when making moderately tight turns.
I damaged the prop today and would like to try a different sized prop that will hopefully allow the engine to turn up to the maximum rated 6000 rpm. I assume that reducing pitch by an inch or two will easily make that happen but I would also like to be able to cruise at a lower rpm than 4000 (for some reason I feel like 3500 is the right number but I may be way off base here). Will decreasing the pitch (but increasing maximum rpms by about 500) provide an overall increase in top speed?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
I repowered it with a 2008 Suzuki DF150 that had 138 hours logged on the internal data recorder. The prop that came with the Suzuki that I have been using is a 14.25 x 21 x 3-blade aluminum.
The boat has no trim tabs and is somewhat slow to plane (I'm estimating about 10 seconds with the motor trimmed fully down). It doesn't like to stay on plane under 4000 rpm and maxes out at 5500 rpm at about 36mph with the engine trimmed up as much as possible without ventilating (or is that cavitating?).
According to Edgewater, the boat should hit 40mph with 150hp.
I had the motor installed by a local Suzuki dealer and I would guess that it is installed high enough since once the boat is up on plane, I don't have much range before the prop starts ventilating. I also need to keep it trimmed almost fully down when making moderately tight turns.
I damaged the prop today and would like to try a different sized prop that will hopefully allow the engine to turn up to the maximum rated 6000 rpm. I assume that reducing pitch by an inch or two will easily make that happen but I would also like to be able to cruise at a lower rpm than 4000 (for some reason I feel like 3500 is the right number but I may be way off base here). Will decreasing the pitch (but increasing maximum rpms by about 500) provide an overall increase in top speed?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
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