i never sing in the right pitch but i always have the right pitch prop stick around to find out how to get the proper propeller pitch hi i'm sean from lens cove lessons and boating and all the time we get people who want to get a new prop whether they've damaged one or they think it'll improve the performance and they really don't understand that there really are only very few propellers that will work with each individual boat so in today's video i'm going to tell you why that is and i'm going to give you a brief science lesson on how a propeller drives the boat forward and what some of the terms mean like pitch and diameter and give you an idea of what to look for when you're buying a prop for your boat so when you're buying a propeller for a boat you have a number of different things that you're looking at you're looking at the material is it aluminum is it stainless or perhaps it's bronze you're looking at the diameter and that is the overall diameter of the propeller from one blade tip to another you're looking at the pitch and that is a number which tells you approximately how much water it'll push with every revolution and you're also looking at the number of blades we're not going to talk about blades too much on this that'll be another video but if you want to know more about proper pairs and when you should have it done check out this video here so let's talk about diameter diameter is the the overall size of the propeller and usually the larger diameter propeller you have the more water it'll push particularly at low rpm and speeds and large diameter propellers are great for heavy loads they're great for maneuvering around the dock and they're great for pulling typically speaking when you want performance and you want to go fast you look at slightly smaller diameter propellers to allow for faster top end speed and less drag so now let's talk a little bit about pitch the pitch of a propeller is in theory for one revolution how far in a solid that would travel so let's take this propeller that shows us that it is a 26 pitch prop so if this was going through a piece of plastic or a pleats of wood and you rotated it one time it would travel 26 inches so when you have a smaller pitch propeller say a 13 pitch for every revolution it travels a shorter distance and when you have a really big pitch propeller like a 29 for every revolution it pushes a longer distance so think about that the rpm your boat maximum is set by the manufacturer so if your engine will rotate at 5000 rpm and that's reduced through your lower unit gear ratio every time it goes around it's going to push the boat a certain distance so the higher the pitch the more top end speed you have what's true about boats though are is that there are no gears so this is the only gear you have so for every revolution whether you are idling at the dock or whether you're going tubing speed or you're going wide open throttle that is the gear in which you're driving so picture it like a bicycle it's like having a one-speed bike if you had a bike that had only one tall gear say 10th speed it would be much much harder to push but once you got up to speed you would be able to go a lot faster if you had a bike that only had a small gear say its second gear it would be very easy to accelerate it and very easy to push but you couldn't go very fast because you'd be running your legs very quickly the same is true for props and that's why when people ask us i'd like to change my prop pitch it's like saying i always want to run in a different gear on my bike there really is only one ideal gear for each engine and that is a pitch and diameter that will get the boat up on plane properly accelerate and not over or under rev at wide open throttle and in theory there's only one perfect prop for one boat load or usage you can play with it a little bit perhaps go slightly smaller pitch to get a little bit more hole shot or perhaps you can go slightly higher pitch to get a little bit more top end speed but be very very careful when you do that because it will change the way your engine performs the weight and size of your boat is going to determine the pitch that is correct the engine power and the engine gear ratio through your drive is all going to have an impact on what pitch prop works best typically when you buy a boat new from a manufacturer it will have tested each engine combination and provide the right pitch prop when you're buying a used boat make sure you lake test it watch this video here on that process to see if it gets up to the right rpm range so you're going to want to make sure that that the boat accelerates properly and gets on plane properly and gets up to wide open throttle rpm that the manufacturer specifies if it doesn't do those things you may have the wrong pitch prop on the boat or there might be an engine running issue so our advice to you is be very careful when switching props if you have a boat that's underperforming don't automatically assume that by switching the propeller will give you a result so you're going to want to talk to a marine dealership professional tell them what your boat is how long it is how heavy it is what engine you have and what current pitch prop you have you're going to want to show them the prop diameter it's rotation which is either right hand or left hand and it's pitch and the other thing you're going to need to know is when i go at wide open throttle what rpm is my engine running so don't go into a dealership expecting to have a discussion about propellers without having all those pieces of information with you if you want to know more about aluminum versus stainless propellers check out this video here thanks for joining us on today's lenscove lessons and boating make sure you subscribe to get on board for more of these type of videos if you liked today's video make sure you throttle that like button get out on the water have fun and stay safe you