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Prop for a pontoon
I just bought a Mercury 60HP Big Foot to re power a 18' Sun Tracker Bass Buggy. What prop pitch would be good for general use? I'm thinking a Black Max 11". Thanks
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That's a popular prop for toons, and the pitch will sound about right.
I had my 24' Bennington tritoon out last week in the cold, and the F150 Yamaha with a 15 pitch prop topped out @ 42 mph @ 6200 rpm's. You can feel the boat floating like a tunnel hull at anything over 32 mph.
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Thanks, one dealer said no more than 10" but I think an 11" will be okay for the 18' Bass Buggy. My current 16 mph may jump up to 20 or 21. LOL! I have an Allison with a 2.5 Mercury for my speed need. My neighbor just bought a 21' Bennington TriToon with a 150 Mercury four stroke. He has a SS prop, Inertia I think, not sure of the pitch but he runs 40 plus too. Those are really nice pontoon boats.
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I've got the 60 big foot on my toon. It does 20 with me and the wife. They rigged it and propped it with whatever is the standard prop for the big foot. Pretty sure it was 11. Mine is a 20ft.
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I see you have two 60 BF's. How do you like them? I'm replacing the 40 HP Force on my Pontoon, bought new with the boat in 1995. It has been a very solid old motor, no major problems and still runs good, just not much power. I hope the 60 four stroke will be quieter, smoother, use less fuel and pull a tube a little faster.
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Gotta admit I loved/hated my Force 40 at times, had a bunch of electrical issues initially but it was pretty solid after that. Then I put a 85 Johnson 115hp on it but had all kinds of issues with it and as soon as I fixed that, I ended up buying that 60 big foot. Wife and I LOVE it. No more issues, turn the key and it fires up in 1 second. Wife no longer worries if the motor will break down on us like the others did at the worst times. Yep, then this spring, intended to buy a 90 or 115 4 stroke for the 93 Nitro 170TF I have (although the 1990 Johnson 115 runs pretty dang good) but I wanted dependability but BPS didn't have any in stock. Went back that afternoon and bought the new 175TF that came with a 60 (not the bigfoot). Just as dependable UNTIL disaster of sorts. I was in Louisiana and had a brand new SS prop on it and was going along about 4000 rpm on a lake (marsh fishing) when suddenly I lost speed like I lost the prop. Put it in reverse, nothing so raised the motor and sure enough, didn't see the prop. 3 hours later when I'm hauled to the dock and we get it on the trailer, that's when I noticed no prop shaft is visible.
So first thing I did was check the front of the lower unit to make sure I didn't hit anything - nothing. So looked inside the lower unit and saw that the prop shaft had broken clean off. Had a little bubble in the middle of the shaft and thought that was odd. Next morning took it to Evolution Marine in Houma. Derrick looks at it and I had 11.1 hours on the motor and said it definitely appears that the prop shaft had a defeat during the forging process. Explains that normally when a prop shaft breaks, its a 45 degree angle with jagged edges. Mine looked like it was a even clean cut (didn't appear twisted either). Said they would have to replace the lower unit since water would have penetrated it.
Long story short, I went to Morgan City to their other shop, picked up a LU, took it back to them by 11am and they had it out the door by 2pm still under what I have on the 5 year warranty (bought it during a special). He said Mercury could come back and deny the warranty but he wasn't gonna hold me up. So I assume I'm waiting for the results of the metal analysis for confirmation and I figure that would take a while. But even though I had never experienced even a motor blowing up before (and hope I never do and glad I didn't buy an Optimax) I'm very happy with those 60 4 strokes.
I've also installed MercMonitors for both of those motors. Both are level 2's (in case I ever upgrade motors) but I love them as they tell me how much fuel I'm burning at whatever RPM's I'm running. In some respects I wished I got a 75 (but I'd would had to wait again) but the MercMonitors give more info on them (and even more for bigger motors). My first MercMonitor cost me almost 200 more than my current one (didn't add some stuff).
As to your questions, its a WHOLE LOT QUIETER. You barely know its running especially on a pontoon boat. My force 40 only got me about 15mph at most and that made it struggle. Only about 8 or 9 at cruising speed. With my 60 bigfoot I get 20mph at 5450 rpm or 14-15 mph at 3200 rpm cruising speed. I can cruise all day long for 3 days on a 20 gal tank. At 3200rpm it burns 1.6 gal a hour, at 5450 it burns 4.5 gal an hour. (nice feature of that MercMonitor).
Even on my 175TF, it'll go 6000 rpm with my SS prop (only 5500 on the aluminum) but both push the boat at 30mph but I found again that 3000 rpm is the sweet spot at 1.5 gal per hour and it goes 20mph trimmed. Yep, retired sure is sweet even if it does hurt to launch and load the boat.
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Good info, sounds like the 60 will be a nice motor. I have a SC1000 monitor on my 2.5, that will be my first purchase after a prop for this motor. Odd about your prop shaft, there was a rash of these breaking on the 2.5 motors from Merc racing about 12 years ago, they ended up going to a larger Dia. shaft. I drove down to the BPS in Tulsa today and picked up the motor, surprised at the size of the crate. A big card board box inside a steel angle iron frame, I'll have to use my FEL to lift it out of the pick up. My Pro Max motors just came in card board boxes, nothing like this crate. There's a made in China sticker on the box, just under the Mercury/Fondulac info. I hope that means just the packaging and not that Mercury has out sourced motor assembly to China. Force motors get a lot of bashing but the last few model years that had Mercury gear cases and electrics were pretty good for a basic old school design. I may wait awhile before I hang this motor but if I have any questions I'll send you a PM. Thanks again for the feed back.
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