Propellers

As is now well known, Alan Burnard was a propeller expert and designed many race propellers. He also maintained a table of the standard props for the Fairey Powerboats.

Since Alan's death in February 2012, there is no longer a single place to go for Fairey propeller information.

Some years back, Alan allowed me to digitize his prop table and publish the resulting file on the various Fairey sites. I reproduce it here so that Fairey Owners worldwide can check the propeller dimensions for their craft.

Bear in mind that Alan's standard props were setup for the engines of the time, typically the large Ford and Perkins blocks of the day: 5.9 litres; 2400 rpm and except for the Swordsman, 1:1 gearbox ratios. The table laid out below is based on Alan's data from July 1973.

Fairey powerboats are starting to acquire more modern power-plants. Although often of similar capacity, the rev range is often very different, with the Iveco and Cummins motors reaching up to 3100 rpm. If your motor isn't listed, please contact us and we'll attempt to come up with suitable propellor data.

If you have an existing motor/prop combination that works well, please let us know - we'd like to add it to the table. Please provide: The motor type; power and rpm; gearbox ratio; Prop diameter and pitch. And, of course, the boat type.

All dimensions are Diameter x Pitch in inches. All Gearbox ratios are 1:1 (direct drive) except where noted.

Props are nearly always Left Hand on both shafts, except Swordsman with reduction ratios which are Right Hand. Some installations have handed props but typically not with 1:1 BW gearboxes. Boats with handed Perkins engines will usually be on BW 1:1 and have handed props. I hope this is clear.