5-Blade Props

[Glastron1987]

Anybody have experience with the Mercury High-fives as compared to the Hill Marine 5-bladed props? The Hills seem to have bigger diameter blades. Wonder how their performance compares and if a diffeence in pitch is needed to compensate.

[hallett_21]

I have only run the high five (19p) on a 250xs on a hallett vector. Great and I mean great ski prop. Holeshot is like a bat outa hell. Top end however is like 60-63 with a light load. To give perspective with a Bravo 1 offshore 23p (i believe may have been 24) boat saw 74 on gps with three people and a decent amount of fuel

[imq707s]

I tested out a Hill 5-blade on my Vegas XT a few years ago. I was really surprised at how good it actually ran. Not really much bow lift from it, but it came out of the hole nice and smooth without much cavitation, and the top end numbers were ok. If I could get ahold of one again, I would like to do some more testing with it.

[Glastron1987]

Thanks for the info. I'm currently running a 20" High-Five small (XR4-size) hub on my standard hub lower unit. Just upgraded it to the stronger LU this past year and didn't want to spring for a new prop yet. The small hub always performed well for me with the small LU... around mid 50's and maybe about the same but with more RPMs with the standard LU. Just think if I go with the stardard hub prop I might get a bit more bite form the prop. So the Hill and Merc are the two choices.

Interesting about the bow-lift. That's something to concider. I'm not sure if that is good or bad. I guess that could mean your top end when trimmed out may be a little slower than otherwise, but also may provide a bit more tucked in control as for skiing.

As for hallet, I'm guessing the big difference for you was really the pitch not the prop design. 60-63 with a 19 pitch prop sounds impressnve to me. I guess that what you get with a 250. I'm guessing your rpms must have been over 6K.

[M. HARDEE]

When u went from the xr lower the gear was possibly 1.78 ---compared to the big case of 2.01 or 1.87 causing rpm change, also the case bullet is bigger so may have lost some blade bite.

[Glastron1987]

Yep, went from the 1.78 to 1.87. Think you're right about slight loss in blade bite; got me through the year, but time to reprop...properly.