Providing the best performing propellers for pleasure, commercial, and military craft is our passion and our history.

Michigan Wheel is the world leader in supplying boat builders, engine manufacturers, and boat owners with high quality, performance propellers. Our propellers, both inboard and outboard/sterndrive are successfully being used on hundreds of thousands of boats throughout the world.

To provide the marine industry with ever increasing levels of performance, Michigan Wheel has developed some of the most advanced propeller engineering and manufacturing technologies in existence today. Whether your needs are for a standard series or fully custom propeller design, our continued advances in propeller design and manufacturing will offer benefits to the Michigan propeller you purchase.

We offer the broadest range of propeller designs in the industry, in multiple materials, and in size ranges from 3” to over 30 feet, ensuring the best propulsion solution possible for your particular boating needs.

Inboard boats have propulsion systems that consist not only of a propeller but also include a shaft, strut, and rudder. For the best boat performance, all of these propulsion components need to be designed to work together as a system. For generations, basic strut and rudder designs have been used that while they are functional, they have changed very little and not enhanced performance.

With the utilization of advanced Naval Architecture computational modeling tools, Michigan Wheel has successfully developed more advanced strut, propeller, and rudder systems that are providing significant benefits in terms of improved efficiency, higher speeds, and reduced noise-vibration.
Our sterngear systems use wake adapted hydrodynamic technologies and are manufactured utilizing CNC machining processes for the highest tolerances possible.

The shaft strut, whether it is an I or V strut design, is designed to work in the water flow that is influenced by the rotation and pressure field generated by the adjacent propeller. The same design considerations are given to the rudder, which is also influenced by the propeller’s impact on the water flow. The result of the advanced computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modeling design process are strut – propeller – rudder systems that minimize drag and reduce cavitation. This results in increased speed, efficiency, and noise-vibration reduction.

Michigan Wheel builds the most advanced designs and highest tolerance sterngear systems in the world!

Michigan Wheel offers a number of engineering services including but not limited to: vessel performance predictions, propeller design, strut and rudder design, and underwater appendage arrangement design.

We have a variety of tools at our disposal including proprietary hydrodynamic codes and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. Michigan Wheel has spent the past 3 decades developing advanced hydrodynamic design tools, initially for propellers, but more recently for struts and rudders as well. In the process, we’ve become experts in CFD for marine vessel simulation. These days, a lot of engineers dabble in CFD, but few can say they are truly experts. Our CFD models have been validated repeatedly against model tests and full scale trials.

The Aqualube range of rubber sleeved bearings are designed for marine and industrial applications. These bearings feature a specially formulated nitrile rubber which offers outstanding resistance to abrasion and wear. Michigan Wheel USA’s comprehensive range of standard brass shell bearings, non-metallic (phenolic) shell bearings and flanged bearings are available in sizes for shafting up to 10-1/2" in diameter with metric sizes up to 260mm in diameter.