Well today after about an hour of crappy water to wakeboard on I decided to pull the kids on the tube. I did stay in the middle of the lake and made sure there were no wakeboarders around
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Anyway, we take a short break and i get ready to take off again and the boat stalls, restarts then stalls again. Just then my GF says "Wait, the rope is stuck." Yep low and behold the rope is wrapped around the base of the prop. This is and I/O, so I lift the motor and we unwrap the rope. Well when we take off, major vibration in the steering. We slow down and check it out in the water and and I can not see a whole lot and neither can she. But she says an edge of the prop doesnt feel right. I figure lets get it on the trailer and check it out. Anyway, we get it in and the edge of one of the blades is torn back about 2 inches and about 1/4 inch into the blade, and one blade has bad cavitation marks. My question is would this rip in the prop cause the vibration? I am thinking yes, but could there be something else. I tried to eyeball the prop shaft as best I could and it didn't seem to be wobbling at all.
I know a new prop is deffinately need now and I want to go to a 4 blade. I have hit pretty much every prop sizer online and they all recommend something different. I currently have a stock 3blade 15 1/2 x18 prop and the recommendation I am getting is a 14 1/2 x 18 or a 14 x 17. Any thoughts? Like I said this is a 20 foot Maxum I/O with the 5.7 v-8. Thanks for the help.