Saw JD Richey sportin the UHMW shoe in the last STS, curious if anyone else out there has one, for those of us not running a tunnel it could be a worthy investment!!!

Saw JD Richey sportin the UHMW shoe in the last STS, curious if anyone else out there has one, for those of us not running a tunnel it could be a worthy investment!!!

Or, learn how to run a sled. What's next, a rubber truck?

That was good Sol.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

Look not everyone get to run the Geesh SOL. I mean if you can run that past T-bag slough I think you can run a sled most places you could want down here. If you can run the pongo you're a flat out god with a sled!

Never did run the Pongo in my john boat. We used to fly up it as a route back to the lodge at Lake Aleknagik from the Togiak. Once we flew up it with the lid at about 750 feet and the only way the pilot, Bud Holt, could see was looking straight down at the river out the side window, canyon walls on both sides and no room to turn the plane around, in high winds to boot. That was probably the scardest I've ever been in my life. I thought we were through for sure. The clients in back were fuc%ing hysterical. NOT FUN.

Ya, when that area get Shatty it gets SHATTY! We were over by goodnews in a storm, caught a up draft and then imediatly got tossed right back down by the next gust. Me and the other guide asked after the flight and our pilot said it was probably an 80+foot drop.
The pongo was nuts cause there isnt really a deffined path and there are a bunch of mini bolders through the hole thing so if you don't find what path you can you're F'ed

"Mini-boulders" is what I call them, too. LOL.......

I was just being me, Jake, I do not disagree. I hate that sound.

BAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMM..........

Never used an UHMW shoe, but I wonder if they really do all that is advertised.

I always thought shoes were more or less designed to break on impact. I'm no physics major, but it seems like if the shoe doesn't break on impact, something else will give instead. Like damage the case bolts, or jar something else in the pump housing.

I blew up a shoe on the copper my first summer up in AK on a hastily planned alt. trip at a time when it was so low you could hardly drag a raft down it, and I hit hard. The impact occured on a slide from a 90+ degree turn along a cliff with a rock outcropping. It knocked a gash in the port-side back/bottom edge and kicked the yami up so hard it knocked the cowling off. It cracked the shoe right down the middle on the port and starboard sides all the way up to the flange, but the impeller and pump housing was fine. As a result, it fired right back up and got us back up the crick at the end of the day. A new shoe and it has ran like a top for the last two seasons with all the same internals. While i clearly was lucky, I also think that the shoe splitting is what protected the rest of the motor.

I wonder if the result would have been any better/worse with a 'indestrucible' shoe. I can see how guys might not like the way their shoe or grate looks from normal wear, like ticking rocks in downstream shallows, so in those situations I can see how a UHMW shoe would seem more durable for that kind of wear. But in the event you hit a dead head or just plain whack something connected to china, I wonder if the result would actually be any better. Probably not much of a concern if you are always running the same water, but more so if you run a lot of different rivers.

Dom

I only wiped out one foot on my boat this last summer... f'n sleeper underwater mountain in 20' of water that no one had seen before...

Somehow I don't think any amount of UHMW would have saved me on that one...

I had the boat turned at about 45 degrees wide open spinning around in a HUGE "wide open" pool just immediately downstream of the lake, and hit it so f'n hard it just immediately stopped the boat.. thank god no one was hurt...

It slowly got me back to the lodge, and all we had to swap out was the foot portion itself, as the impeller, pump, and everything else was fine....

I think if you looked at the physics of a collision between a pump shoe and a rock/log/etc, you'd find that the shoe material would change the forces applied to the rest of the motor during a collision very little. Typically, there just isn't a lot of compression and deformation of material during a collision to absorb and dissipate the forces applied to the motor. If the metal shoe didn't break, but compressed and deformed when a UHMW shoe wouldn't, then it should make a difference.

*Disclaimer: Dan S. is no physicist. He has no degree in physics or any closely related field. His opinion should only be taken as gospel if you're really dumb and/or gullible.

good info thank you my bro's

I've never blow up a shoe, but I had one fall off once through no fault of my own. The doehead mechanic back at the lodge didn't torque the bolts properly. I was *WAY* below camp on the middle fork of the Goodnews in AK, on plane when I seemingly just lost power. I had a guide buddy with me and we rowed over to the shore, lifted the motor and thought WTF??? After looking around we could see it out in mid-channel in about 8 feet of water because it was painted bright red. We drug the boat upstream, floated down over it and dropped the anchor, and were able to snag it off the bottom with a Pixie spoon. I had an Alen wrench and spare bolts in my guide pack and bolted it back on. What could have been real Badnews on the Goodnews was averted.

So that's what pixies are used for! Good to know!

If a boat is built properly with the tunnel, the shoe should never touch the river bottom. However, if you hit the bottom hard enough, you may dammage more than your pride. Tunnels are great, but you can get a false felling in shallow water. You think you should be hitting rocks and your not. The next step is to go until you do hit. When you do it will be the boat that hits. It hurts!

Or, if your just plain not paying attention.......

These guys could have used some UHMW of teh bottom of this boat! cool video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaguPZpXXco

Holly shait! Those guys got stones and are freakin wheelmen!!!! We ran some stuff last year but that was just flat out retarted!

That video is crazy. In some of that stuff it looked like they were going out of their way to run over stuff. Wow.

Dom

LMFAO........