Cleaning Stainless Prop

I bought a boat this year that had been slip/ water stored. It has a nice stainless steel prop, however it is very dirty and dull looking. What have people used to clean and shine their props after a summer sitting in the water? I tried rubbing compound, simple green soak, and dish soap. Ideas?

You don't want to polish your prop if you intend to use it. Polishing your prop involves removing some material so the surface evens out and it can shine. Unless you want to re-balance it at a prop shop, leave it alone. The best performing props on the market - CNC machine Acmes and some will put the CNC machined OJs in this catagory - have a rough finish.

Why do all the Off shore race boats have all very high polished finish props? Hm, 100mph plus boats.So who is right and who is wrong?

Neither. They buy a stock prop and then have it "balanced and blueprinted" for about $600 each. This results in a very polished prop with perfect numbers and balance at high rpms.

Acme and OJ CNC props are CNC machined and the maching marks are not polished out. I asked Acme about this. They did for testing create several props with the same numbers but with varying levels of "polish." The mirror polish prop did have a .6 mph better top end (I think - memory foggy). Acme uses a .060 spacing for the CNC tracks. It is the best balance of performance and price. Closer spacing or polishing will raise the price, but not the performance in a measurable sense.

Back to SS props - none to my knowledge are CNC machined, but cast and polished. Different machining methods from the NiBrAl. Acme does have some high speed surface piercing drive props with the same CNC marks as the props we use. Still works great. With the Acme CNC you get to skip the $600 BnB job.

This is a highly polished stainless steel prop that has become dirty over time. It is for a I/O and not an inboard. I don't want to polish it by removing material to make it shine. I want to remove the scum and film to restore the shine. What have people used on their stainless rub rails and railings? It's a mercury stainless prop and would have been shiny when new. Has anyone tried never dull?

Never dull would work but it sounds like you need something stronger then that to cut through the crap but not scratch the finish? What about some kind of cleaner they use for stainless kitchen ware (forks, knives, and spoons)? Or maybe a greeny pad for the kitchen?

Use an acid such as vinegar to remove the mineral deposits. Soak it in vinegar overnight and use a stiff brush to remove the scum and minerals. An ammonia soak will do the same thing. Finish up with Flitz. It still won't shine like new because of the the very small pits in the finish of the prop, but it will be clean.

You could send it to Mercury Racing and have the prop worked. It is about $600 and it will give you about 3 mph on the top end when they are done. It will also be polished to a near mirror finish.

A simple polishing wheel on the end of a drill should work just fine. There is a recent commercial out for a buffing pad, I don't recall the name. Polishing it should not affect the balance, you couldn't possibly remove enough material to throw off the balance. However, if the blades were polished differently (one shiny, one not so much so) It will effect the prop performance.
If your doing this for "looks" then I wouldn't even attempt it.
Function over form, with few exceptions.

Bruce is talking about Filtz.

I used toilet bowl cleaner to clean up my hull in the same situation. Maybe it would work on the prop? No promises tho.

why would you want to polish your prop? i thought i was excessively anal......

I'm not that anal,but it's bad. This boat sat in the Mississippi river. You can scrape the gook off with your fingernail from the prop. It's fuzzy. I should say I want it cleaned to the metal and not so much polished to shine.

Bleach

Someone better try those Magic Erasers...would be too cool if they were magic on vinyl AND props!!!!

Steel wool works wonders.