Viewer Comments

M. Purdue

Hi, You’re listed as the webmaster for the Cruise-A-Home website. I have a technical question. I’m not sure you can answer it, but if not can you forward it to a CAH guru that possibly can?

I recently bought a 31 foot CAH with the Mercruiser 165 I/O (both are standard right hand engines). I knew the props were thrashed, and I needed to move it 15 miles on the Ca Delta to a boat yard that would haul it and let me work on it myself. So…I ordered a set of props from Quicksilver, one LH one RH. I went to replace the props this weekend before I made the trip. The trims didn’t work on the boat either, and I used a rope to raise them and worked from my dinghy. I took off the port prop fist, and not thinking I just took the prop that matched the prop I was changing and installed it. The old prop had the same exact hub kit, so I suspected these had been changed out sometime in recent history. When I got to the Starboard prop, I realized this was a RH prop, and I had a LH prop. I also realized that both existing props were right handed. I will add that the hub kit on the LH prop I had, and the RH prop that was existing also matched exactly. Even though they were both right hand props (existing) they had different hub kits. Again, my hub kits matched existing hub kits even though my props were LH & RH. I installed the LH prop, and ran the motor in reverse. 15 miles right? (And yes I realized my outdrive would be locked thinking it was in reverse…) I made it 14 miles before the starboard drive gave it up in a big way…

Then when I got home I was looking through the owners pictures and I noticed that the photo of the “Trailerable” 31 from Colorado also has 2 right handed props. I thought that the props should turn to the outboard.

So, my 2 questions:

Do the outdrives care if they are in “Reverse” or “Forward”? I thought the ratio was the same either way and it didn’t matter, which is how you accomplish reverse rotation.

Should I buy another right hand prop and put the outdrives back the way they were? I’d rather switch the props so they both turn to the outboard, but not if the drives can’t handle it.