Might make a good conversation piece on your boat Wheels! You can tell them it's a coolantpump from a Nuclear Powered Aircraft Carrier. How could they disprove that huh? It looks cool. Probably didn't work too well or it'd be mainstream equipment eh?
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Yours Aye! Rick ~^~^~^^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~~^~^~~^~^~^^~~^~^ "It's not the boat "you built" until you've sworn at it, bled on it, sweated over it, cried beside it and then threatened to haul the POS outside and burn it!"
Looks like a forerunner of what we now call "jet drives".
George
That was what I was thinking. A bunch of the old hot rodders in Dallas used to bolt a jet drive to a 454 cubic inch chevy engine and make a boat that was too fast for any of the lakes. My dad used to be a very competitive water skier so we saw a few of these, but that was only the nozzle end, not the pump itself.
Jet boats would be as common as any other type of boat in NZ. I am very familar with jetdrives, as I used to crew for a mate that was into Jet Sprint racing. But I ain't ever seen anything like that thing before. very interesting.
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Wheels
For God so loved the world..........He didn't send a committee.
Jet boats would be as common as any other type of boat in NZ. I am very familar with jetdrives, as I used to crew for a mate that was into Jet Sprint racing. But I ain't ever seen anything like that thing before. very interesting.
Well I don't know Alan, considering that the ad says Water jet propulsion device, and it has a similar shroud /water diverter to a Hamilton Jet unit, I would have thought that it was maybe some sort of Water jet propulsion device.
Ummm, I didn't say I didn't know what it was. I was asking if anyone had seen or any experiance with this particular design. If you look closely at the "wheel" thingy on top(I presume thats the top) it has holes that have an angle to them that make them look like they would throw water using centrifugal force, so this part could well be the actual pump. The Hamilton Jet you have pictured uses an impellor system. In that picture, it is a single stage impellor, but two and three stage units are available as well. Then impellor is inline with the water flow. This other contraption looks more like the pump is seperate and is pumped around into the nozzle system.
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Wheels
For God so loved the world..........He didn't send a committee.
Boat: Research vessel for a university, retired now.
Posts: 10,405
Pumps are less efficient than propellers because pumps have quite a bit of wetted surface area that contributes nothing towards propulsion. The advantage of pump drives is that the impeller is protected and it is much more difficult for a line or other debris to get sucked into a pump..although I know of one pump boat that did suck a line onto the impeller. The boat had to be hauled in order to remove the line.
Very interesting bit of water Jet development history there Wheels. I have been involved in designing and building jet boats using both twin Doen and Hamilton drives for 26ft dive tenders so this was really fascinating for me to see how the Inventor went through the learning curve.
Reading thru both of his patent applications covering the development from 1960 to 1966 seems that Gongwer was fixated on keeping the Jet unit pump behind the transom but above the waterline to reduce drag. He developed a reverse flow by instead of using a deflecting reverse bucket… he used a closing gate to redirect water to those forward leaning tubes. (Must have been a very wet transom area in reverse). Also added designs for using the jets pump to cool an inboard engine.
Earlier models I think still must have used rudders then he came up with some designs for hooking up to an outboard as the primary mover so he could pivot it and steer it like an outboard…. but all that looks light weight. Fascinating to read his patent explanations as each idea is tested out.
I think his stumbling block in achieving success was his reluctance to put a high volume pump inside the boat and taking advantage of a high volume natural flow with just the pivoting nozzle and the reverse bucket on the outside. I imagine in 1960 what he was trying was incredibly radical. Fascinating stuff!
The boats we developed were very efficient and great for manuevering amongst divers
I also imagine he was trying to come up with a "new wheel". Hamilton already had his drive working and I can only imagine it being big news back then. I imagine the inventor of this divice was trying to make a product that would be better than Hamiltons. But in the end, seeing as time and the rest of the world have never really radicly changed Hamiltons original design, I guess the Hamilton Jet Drive was spot on the money in concept.
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Wheels
For God so loved the world..........He didn't send a committee.