Ron P

Try finding this in a book somewhere.

"I've been told" - Because the water doesn't come off the bottom of a Vee hull perfectly straight, you want to get the drives to appear straight in the flow of water.

I've used a 1/4 inche difference between the nose cones and the prop shafts.

Why would you toe out?

pstorti

if your props spin inwards toe out, if they spin outwards toe in. 1/8 to 1/4 inch is fine. The reason is that the lower half of the prop is in denser water and therefore exerts more lateral force on the drive tending to pull it inward or outward depending on the rotation. One of the main reasons to "toe" the drives is so they will be as close to straight as possible and therefore cause the least amount of drag while running. 1/8-1/4" total toe, sum of both drives. Measure the front of one drive to the other and then the rear of the drives, the rears should be wider or narrower depending on your rotation than the fronts. If you find your boat to be handling strangely sometimes toe adjustments can help. Not all boats run happily with perfectly straight drives.

RaggedEdge

Back 4 More, Are you sure on this? I am assuming you are, I was thinking in a little.

Back4More

Thats what I was told, but pstorti makes a good point with the rotation.
I'm spinning outward.

mr_velocity

You sure denser and not cleaner. You can't compress water and make it more dense.

Ed

Incorrect advice. When prop rotation is inboard, then toe-in, when prop rotation is outboard, toe-out. It all has to do with removing what they call gearcase "crabbing" at speed & under a load. There should be both an inboard & an outboard tie-bar as well, to maintain this adjustment. The definition of "toe", refers to the leading edges of a gearcase & came from gearcases/lower-units, years ago, being nick-named a lower "foot". Ed

pstorti

Technically you are right but the lower half of the prop gets a better bite than the upper half. This is why single screw inboard boats turn great one way and horribly in the other. The point is that the lower half of the prop determines which way it is trying to pull the drive.


We are saying the same thing but you are talking about the front of the drive and I am talking about the rear. Also I have never seen a pair of drives with two separate tie bars.

Kanookstr

So you guys are saying If your props are turning out ward then your prop shaft Center too center should be less then the front of the drive center too center?.
Right now my prop shafts are closer together than the front of the drives by about 1/8", and my props are turning out ward. Am I good?
Thanks

Pantera1

in an 1/8 to a 1/4

Reckless32

Geeeeez. I've been asking this question all over the place on different posts in different forums on dfferent boards, and I'm more confused now than ever.

I thought I fell into the perfect situation last week when it was suggested to measure the little dimple mark at the top of the outside transom plate under the stickers. They were inline with a sometime visible scribe mark on the transom itself just above the plate. THOSE measurements would be your engine/drive shaft dead center. Then you would use that nunmber as a baseline for your toe setting with conventional and consensus wisdom saying if spinning out, then 1/16" to 1/8" toe out (propshafts closer than the nosecones on the shaft ends themselves minus the props). Oppsoite if spinning in due to of course drive torque caused by the prop direction.

I measured my dimples on the plates and got 34 7/16". DEad center on my propshafts and cones fell at 35 1/8" even. Well that flew that the dimple theory out the window because I expected shafts/dimples to be exact when centered. Nope.

So using as exact dead center straight ahead measurement as i could, I ended up setting my propshafts at 35 1/16", and my cones at 35 3/16".

Background: When I got the boat new the tie-bar appeared all the way screwed in (toe-out). One drive appeared a little more inward than the other. So I messed with the toe. Scrubbed some speed, and RPM. Hence the magic toe system hunt began. With my final adjustment listed above, my tie-bar is now several turns more "outward" than originally yet to the best of my judgement my measurements above are as correct as i can get it. I did have the drives pulled at the end of the first season due to a leaky transom, or so we thought, plus greasing etc. So maybe during the re-installs the adjustment got screwed. There are nor ther models like mine locally except the 32SS so I can't take a measurement to conduct a sanity check. Anyway, that's my folly with the toe in, toe out chase for perfection.