Propeller

Iaman has acquired a new-to-him boat. It's a 14 year old, 17 foot long Bayliner with a 150 HP Mercury outboard. As might be expected it's a little worn, but the motor only has 300 hours on it, and with that big a motor it scoots along pretty good.

The engine is a sophisticated bit of modern technology: the last time he was out the alarm went off. He took it to the Mercury dealer where they replaced a water impeller and told him the automatic oil injection system was on the fritz and it would cost a fortune to repair it. Some Googling reveals that it is just as likely that there is a problem with the alarm system as there is a problem with the oil injection system. My take is: you have to pour oil into the oil tank when you fill up gas, why not just pour the oil directly into the gas tank and save yourself the whole “what do I do about the broken oil injection (or alarm) system?” dilemma. This got me to thinking. If it's just as easy to pour the oil in the gas tank as it is to pour it in the oil tank, why do we have these automatic mixer things anyway? And then I realized it involves two things that are a whole lot like work: 1) having to remember to add oil, and 2) measuring. If you are off on your ski boat for the weekend, the last thing you want is to have to think about mechanical chickenshit. I mean it's bad enough you have to remember to put gas in tank. You want me to remember to put oil in it too?

The propeller was kind of dinged up, so he took it to the local prop shop, Linden Propeller, which turned out to be the king of the Midwest prop shops, or at the very least is a fine example of American ingenuity, hard work and efficiency (picture from Google Streetview).

The best part is this fancy machine the owner developed for repairing propellers. The video is a little long and a little showy, but it's an interesting piece of equipment.


Linden Propeller Co. Prop Press 360 & 500 with Digital Propeller Scan System   Update September 2018 replaced missing video.