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