Old time "jet pump" outboard fixture

Ray

Ray

Well-known member
While out in King Salmon watching our contractor poke holes in the ground we were allowed to stage the equipment in one of the old government shop buildings. The shops out there are used for both work and non work related things by the government workers due to the lack of decent heated storage. Having been in several of these remote shops across Alaska I have always been surprised by some of the stuff that you can find sitting around. Some things have been sitting for over 50 years just waiting. Its like going into one of those small town hardware stores and finding "treasure" on some back shelf.

So when I wandered around to the back side of the shop and found this beauty sitting on a rack against the back wall I had to take some pictures. What is it you ask? Who made it? The label in the one photo is not readable. It is on a 35hp 'Rude not quite as old as the one we had on our little skiff when I was 10 and lived in OR. You will note that the prop has been expertly "ground" by the Naknek River rocks and gravel. I was not able to find the owner of it since the entire government crew was in training for the week and not available for conversation.

I am thinking that Tom, Lou, or Lee may know something about this thing.

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you also got a transom attachment that raised the motor ht up to the required ht.....

We ran nem on the shallow impoundments in Central Florida back in the 70's....

You had to be careful about water intake and reverse sucked but they were good in shallow water....oh a PURE BITCH in emergent vegetation off of plane......

I've still got one in the garage that came off of a 15HP Mercury.....

These days they do the same thing up there with the manual jack plates on their outboards....lets you lower the motor for deep water and jack it straight up by pushing down on a levered handle...

Steve
 
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A little Googling and nothing comes up for Riffle Runner other than a chub minnow back east. They must be well out of season these days.

Looking at it there in the shop I couldn't imagine how it would work well in any kind of vegetation with that big ramp going up to the cavitation plate. I would guess that it would be worse than my open prop when it gets wrapped with weeds. If they were running in shallow gravel it would just suck that up into the prop and grind it down.
 
Never saw anything like it. If the prop had been completely surrounded by the shield, I would say it was a prototype of the Pump-jet that came on my Navy Seal motor. I don't see how it could run any shallower as I can't see a low water intake and I don't see how it would protect anything except for side impact. I wonder if it was used to try and keep floating lines out of the prop? I'd like to have the 35 though!
 
Kinda looks like it may have been fished out of a Wisc. lake. Never seen the attachment though, sounds like smething that may have been born out of too much darkness and possibly alcohol. Always something new out there, thanks for sharing. I wish I had that like new prop.
 
From the colors the Evinrude was painted, I'd say it was manufactured in the mid 80's. I also think the device is some Rube Goldberb type of prop protector rather than a true jet pump. Apparently the protector didn't work very well as the poor old prop looks like something I used to use.

Is it for auction or anything? If it is I wouldn't bid on it.

Best,
Harry
 
Hell, I've got a couple I'd 'give' you except that one is still on the motor until the end of season. In fact I'd trade for that 'almost new' looking skeg. Now I have to go out to the garage and hammer a couple blades back to sorta original shape so I can use it this weekend.
 
you also got a transom attachment that raised the motor ht up to the required ht.....

We ran nem on the shallow impoundments in Central Florida back in the 70's....

You had to be careful about water intake and reverse sucked but they were good in shallow water....oh a PURE BITCH in emergent vegetation off of plane......

I've still got one in the garage that came off of a 15HP Mercury.....

These days they do the same thing up there with the manual jack plates on their outboards....lets you lower the motor for deep water and jack it straight up by pushing down on a levered handle...

Steve
Click to expand...


Apparently your opinion don't mean much. Hell, you only own one?!?!
 
Hell I even had the patented name for the thing in my post....and where it was designed and for what use...

I'm thinking I'll go get my Barbie Tiara, throw a Drama Queen fit, and quit....do me a favor and beg me to stay so I don't actually have to follow through on the threat....

And, YEP, on only having one...in the 70's I only had one motor....life was simpler then....


Steve
 
You post of pic of you with a barbie tiara on & I'll quit too just to make it a really exciting day around here.
 
half tunnel was even with the bottom of the boat and almost touching the transom.....obviously the boats were flat bottomed....the propeller is completely inside the tunnel so as long as there was forward progress there was adequate water flow across the intake for safe use and, AT SPEED, the water was forced up into the tunnel allowing the boat to run in any water that the boat would float in.....that part si very similar to a JET in that the faster you can run the boat the more efficient the pump is....

It was never meant to be a prop guard rather it was designed to ensure that the prop could be above the bottom of the transom and still have a water column to run in.....you lost some power at high end but they really were pretty efficient once you got some speed up....

We ran them in sand and mud and didn't see the same problems that the propl on this one shows but that makes sense given its use in rocky rivers where it was designed because at slow speed the boat, and therefore the prop sits lower in the water where there was a greater chance for it to hit the rocks....hitting the power also caused the boat to "squat" which in rocky rivers would expose the prop to further potential to damage....

Not surprised that you didn't find anything on it Googling it....it was definately in the early 70's when we bought ours after an acquaintance fished in Alaska with someone that had one.....when he went back two years later and fished with the same outfit they had abandoned the Riffle Runners for the Jack Ass lift which in one form or the other is still in use today.....one of those thinigs that worked well but that lead to something more efficient...once that "more efficient" thing got a foothold the predecessor dies pretty quickly....


Steve
 
The main thing that would scare me is all of the holes drilled in the cavitation plate.

Every duck hunter needs to learn how to pole his or her boat. Seems like a lost art as I see very few hunters using a pole to propel their boats in shallow and iffy water. As I can't find an Ash board to my liking I normally use 2x2 furniture grade douglas fir and feather one end to a skinny paddle and round the other end to fit the hands. If I keep it painted and don't muscle down on it too much one will usually last five years. Main thing about poling the boat is to realize that the gunnell is not a good fulcrum but your feet are. I can't imagine picking up decoys with out a shoving pole to use to pick deke strings and move about in iffy water.
The man that taught me how to pole a boat and use it to pick up dekes has been dead 30 years or so. He was a guide for the famous Currituck Club for years and began a private hunting and fishing guide service later on. He was such a great source of knowledge and a superb guide. I think of him often and pray that he's wearing em out at that big marsh in the sky. Forgive me for running on so much but the old guy in me comes out from time to time.

Best to all,
Harry
 
and then got the graduate course on the Bonefish Flats in the Keys and have always been a big advocate of poling....that said when you have really skinny water fro MILES between you and the place you want to hunt...distances that would take not hours, but days to pole to and from, you need to find a way to run it....

Back then it was either an airboat or the riffle runner....these days its the airboat or the mudmotor....

there were several of us that used the Riffle Runner on the Refuge at Merritt Island....eventually everyone removed there's and moved on to different methods....at least three of the motors that had been drilled for them were used for YEARS after they were removed and if there were any issues I never saw, or heard of them.....

Steve
 
Craig,

Looks to me to be totally different. The Levi system is a true surface drive and the shroud is actually a rudder and not a tunnel. It's my understanding that a true surface drive is the most efficient when the propeller is half out of the water. Therefore no need for a tunnel.
 
I have been urged to use a doel fin on my Grady White, but what keeps me off of that is having to drill the cavitation plate.

Agreed poling for miles is not an option which is why I try to find a closer ramp to where I need to hunt. With so much sand around where I hunt it is frequently easy to launch off the bank. Availability and condition of ramps is the main reason I pay for 4wd on my trucks and keep a chain saw, shovel and axe in the truck bed. I've seen on TV guys fishing for bonefish poling from tall towers and am sure I'd fall off if ever I were to try that type of fishing. There are a few guys around here that fish for drum via poling from towers. They are mostly "A River Runs Through It" types and are purists about fishing with flies. My buds and I use spinners and are not purists but enjoy catching and eating fish. If we release one it is because it's too small or we already have more than we want to clean, or we have reached the legal limit.

The best fulcrum is still your feet,when poling from the deck. I don't know and probably never will know about poling from one of those tower thingies.

Different strokes for different folks.

Best,
Harry
 
of finding a closer ramp, or launch, than to run long distances.....even in the 70's in Florida the options were "one ramp here" and the next ramp "20 miles to the North" and nothing in between but private land or Space Center property that was patrolled by men who might be clad in light blue uniforms but that carried M-16's with extended magazines....here in Washington in the '00's, its either the public ramp or the yard of a milliondy dollar home and while those owners might not be anti hunting I've come to learn that they are "anti truck and boat on their lawn in the wee hours prior to dawn".....

So congrats on the ability to "launch at will"....if you had any ducks there, and a 107 day season I'd be tempted to move.....

No person that is a proficient poler should worry about doing it from an elevated platform....at least once the initial adjustment to the additional ht above the water is resolved....as you, and Archemede's point out its all abou the "fulcrum", (and the lever of course)....elevate the fulcrum, extend the lever and your in the postion of "moving the World" a little quicker from that elevated platform.....and since its the same size, or should be anyway, as the deck you are already poling from its an easy transition....(although I do find that getting up, and down, from it is no longer as easy as it was when I was in my teens and early twenties---something to do with the gut, and the creaky knees, that I somewhere aquired in the years between "then and now")...

The "disdain" for "the River Runs Through It" fellows, all decked out in their CMFM Orvis wear, (complete with an SPF factor of "a bunch), is redolant in your post...remember that what you see isn't necessarily the truth, else we'd all be killing record book Whitetails with a bow we first picked up the day before; killing every Turkey that gobbles; be able to positively state that "I" killed that one duck that fell from the sky after a barrage of over a 30 rounds heard fired; not to mention we'd have aliens, vampires, and honest politicians; all of which is a simple reminder that "what you see in that 20 minutes of video isn't really what happened in those three days of filming".....

Lots of bait in those flats boats, and its not there for a sushi lunch....and more than one Permit has come home to next be seen lying resplendant on a bed of endive, olives where his eye's once were--(I will admit that while Permit is likely my favorite fish I have always found the pimento pupils somewhat unsettling)...

Move that fulcrum up....you'll enjoy the additional ht...

Steve
 
You better find all that old Barbie stuff yo mamma used to make you play with.

My wife recently sold a bunch of her old Barbie and Ken stuff and I was amazed at what the stuff brings. Wonder what my old "Fanner 50" or my old Lash Laroo stuff would bring. I had an original official Lash Laroo bull whip until I Lash Larooed my brother and Daddy took it away from me (he gave me the option of giving it up or facing the business end myself)

Now you owe me a percentage for whatever your Barbie stuff brings.

Best,
Harry

Oh Yeah, Please stay.
 
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