The Tug Boat Mechanic Who Invented the ImpelPro Impeller Puller
- 6 days ago
- 25 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Eddie Protzeller has pulled hundreds and hundreds of impellers. He has been a mechanic since he was 19, went to school for diesel, spent years at Western Towboat running everything from Puget Sound to the Arctic Circle, and now keeps a shop at North Lake Shipyard in Ballard.
He invented the ImpelPro impeller puller because of one afternoon next to a big inline six, when he reached past a fuel tank, felt the impeller start to move, and pulled his hand back holding nothing but the tool.
The Boat Geeks sat him down aboard their floating studio in Port Townsend for the full story. The complete episode is below.
WHO INVENTED THE IMPELPRO IMPELLER PULLER?
The ImpelPro impeller puller was invented by Eddie Protzeller, a Seattle tug boat and yacht mechanic with 16 years of experience on inboard engines and generators. He built it after buying every puller his marine supply store carried and having each one slip off the impeller. The first working prototype was two Sawzall blades with teeth filed into them, because that steel was hard enough to bite the rubber. ImpelPro is now a patented tool made in the USA in two sizes.
THE AFTERNOON THAT STARTED IT
Eddie did what any mechanic does. He went to the marine supply store and bought the tools, on the assumption that somebody had already built a widget for this.
Then he was on a boat, on his side, working the starboard side of a big inline six with a fuel tank in the way. He got a puller onto the impeller and started working it. It felt like it was coming out easily, which should have been the tell. He reached in to take the last of it off, pulled his hand back, and was holding just the tool. The impeller had not moved at all.
Every puller he had bought used a nub to grip the rubber. Rubber is malleable. Squeeze it hard enough to hold and it deforms, and the nub slides off. He could watch it happen.
WHAT THE FIRST ONE WAS MADE OF
He had a spare pump, so he started running the problem over and over on the bench.
He took the knobs out and put bolts in, so he could get real mechanical advantage instead of hand strength. It still slid off. Then he cut up a couple of Sawzall blades, filed teeth into them, and attached those, because that steel is hard enough to actually bite into the rubber instead of pressing against it. The teeth held. Neither side matched the other and the geometry was wrong,but the impeller moved.
That was the proof. Everything after it was refinement: stripping away bulk, and getting every part of the tool onto the center line so nothing sticks out sideways. That last part matters more than it sounds. Depending on how the cam is oriented, a knob on the side of a tool can land anywhere, and engine rooms are full of hoses and brackets that were not put there with your wrench in mind.
Months of iterations followed, first water-jetted, then made on a manual mill and lathe. One version had a knob so oversized that Yami's review was, in full, "that's kind of ridiculous." Eddie's answer: you have to do it wrong to figure out what is right.
WHAT IT ACTUALLY SAVES
Two moments in the episode make the case better than any spec sheet.
A commercial painter who runs a couple of Bristol Bay boats told them that every other year he had been pulling the entire raw water pump to get the impeller out. Four to six hours. He bought the tool, and now one of his deck hands does the same job in about thirty minutes.
And at the other end of the experience range, Lisa, who had never changed an impeller and is not sure she had ever really looked at one, sat down on a stool in an engine room and pulled her first one in under two minutes.
The thing both have in common is that nothing was pried. As Eddie puts it, the moment you go at a pump with screwdrivers and needle-nose pliers, a hundred dollar impeller can turn into a new pump,because all it takes is scoring the housing or the brass and it will not seal when you put it back together. Saltwater is nature's acid, and it finds every mistake.
THE SCANIA, AND WHY THE LARGE EXISTS
About four seasons ago Eddie was looking at a Scania with an impeller roughly three and a half inches long, trying to work out how it was ever supposed to come out. He ended up taking a razor blade to the vanes to get some relief, then jammed an early small version of his own tool onto what was left. It slipped about half the time. He watched it come out anyway, because he had already tried everything else. That job is why the Large tool exists.
HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU CHANGE A BOAT IMPELLER?
Eddie pushes for once a year. His reasoning is that a yearly cycle gives you a known baseline: if it did not fail last year on that schedule, you can trust the schedule. He says he has never come back to an impeller on a normal one-year cycle and found it destroyed. Some wear, yes. Blown apart, no. Stretch it to two years and you might still have sixty or seventy percent of it left, or you might have a story. Boats that sit in silty rivers or work in mud chew through them faster. And the yearly service is not only about the part. It is about opening things up and looking.
His framing: the impeller is the heart of the system. It is the thing moving water to keep everything else cool.
WHAT ELSE IS ANNOUNCED IN THIS EPISODE
Two things. The tool has moved from cast arms to machined billet, which holds the tolerances that the center-line geometry depends on and lets every tooth come out identical. It also carries the ImpelPro name machined directly into the strong back, which Eddie describes seeing for the first time as one of the better moments of the whole project.
And ImpelPro is now carried at Fisheries Supply. That started the way most things with this tool start: Eddie walked in with a pump that had a seized impeller in it, handed it to them, and let them pull it themselves.
ABOUT THE BOAT GEEKS
The Boat Geeks is a marine podcast hosted by Darren and Daeron, recorded aboard the motor vessel Traveler in Port Townsend, Washington, with more than 76,000 subscribers on YouTube. They also run Boater Tested. Full episode and their catalog: theboatgeeks.com
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Q: How often should you change a boat impeller?
A: Eddie Protzeller recommends once a year. A yearly cycle gives you a known baseline, and in his experience an impeller on a normal one-year schedule shows wear but does not come apart. Boats working in silty or muddy water wear them faster. The yearly service also gets you looking inside the pump, which is worth as much as the new part.
Q: Who invented the ImpelPro impeller puller?
A: Eddie Protzeller, a Seattle tug boat and yacht mechanic with 16 years of experience on inboard engines and generators, and a shop at North Lake Shipyard in Ballard.
Q: What was the first ImpelPro prototype made from?
A: Two Sawzall blades with teeth filed into them. That steel is hard enough to bite into the impeller rubber instead of pressing against it and sliding off, which is what every store bought puller he owned had been doing.
Q: Why do impeller pullers slip off?
A: Most grip the impeller with a nub pressed against the rubber. Rubber is malleable, so squeezing it hard enough to hold makes it deform and the nub slides off. Teeth that pierce the face of the impeller hold instead of pressing.
Q: How long does it take to change an impeller without pulling the pump?
A: One commercial owner in this episode had been removing the entire raw water pump every other year, a four to six hour job. With a puller that works in place, one of his deck hands does the same service in about thirty minutes.
Q: Can you remove an impeller with one hand?
A: In many installations, yes. The sealed bearing means you are not fighting the load while you tighten, so it does not take the roughly 300 pounds of grip force that pressing-style tools demand. That matters when you are on your side and cannot get both hands in.
Q: What is the ImpelPro made of?
A: Aluminum alloy and 316L stainless steel, made in the USA. The current version uses machined billet rather than cast arms, which holds the geometry to a tighter tolerance.
Transcript:
[19:22] The tool
The Boat Geeks: Eddie is not only a wonderful mechanic, great with his hands. He is an
inventor. Great with his mind. He is a thinker. So we are going to get into this wonderful tool.
I have used it. I have seen it in action. It is called the ImpelPro, and it is an impeller puller.
The Boat Geeks: But I am curious. In your career you must have pulled and changed many
hundreds. Or is it over a thousand?
Eddie: I am not sure if it is over a thousand. But hundreds and hundreds.
The Boat Geeks: And I imagine in that experience you probably uttered a few choice words every now and then. I am curious, as you are pulling impellers at an impossible angle and thinking there has got to be a better way. You must have a couple of really interesting horror stories. Everybody has this story
Eddie: I think that is a good point, because it is not just me. It is such a negative note for
everyone who has had the same story, or has that relationship with a fellow boat mate of "hey, I am getting ready to go and I have got to do some impellers." It is everywhere. So what we are trying to do is help shape that, and let people learn that there is a method to doing it.
The Boat Geeks: It does not have to be as bad as everybody feels like it is. You are redefining
one of the most basic maintenance elements for anybody drawing water into their boat for the cooling system.
The Boat Geeks: So you are pulling hundreds of impellers. Some of them are just a bear. Some of them, bad words are flying. Where did you have the idea where you went, somebody has got to make a better mousetrap?
Buying every tool in the store
Eddie: I went to the supply store like any mechanic does and bought all the tools, thinking
that someone has made a widget for doing this. Then went down to one of the boats and used it. The larger ones are especially hard to do, because they have so much more length to them compared to the generators, which can be a lot shorter.
Eddie: But the generators can be a bugger too, because there is nothing there besides a little
bit of brass and an O-ring. If you are using a couple of screwdrivers or pliers, you can go from buying a new impeller at 100 bucks to buying a new pump, because you get it all back together and it leaks, or you are trying to take silicone and re-silicone it. And with saltwater being nature's acid, we want to keep it outside of our boat and outside of the generator.
Boat yoga
Eddie: So I went and bought them, climbed on my side. We have now coined the term boat yoga as being a thing.
The Boat Geeks: Everybody out there is picturing that. I know exactly what you are talking
about.
Eddie: So either your legs are over your head, or you are laying on your side trying to do it
with one hand.
"It's just a tool"
Eddie: One of the worst ones was on the starboard side of a big inline six, and I am reaching
back in there because there is a fuel tank. Reaching back in there thinking, wow, this impeller is coming out so easy. And I go to get the last little bit off, and I pull it out, and it is just a tool.
Eddie: And I am like, oh. Okay. So now what?
Eddie: So, slowly designed. I first started out with the idea of a fish hook, something that
bites in and really takes a hold. Because all these ones had nubs on them, and I am thinking, I have to use my hands to tighten as much as I can to put pressure on the rubber, which is malleable. And I am watching it slide off.
The bench
Eddie: So I had a spare pump and I am just doing it over and over again. How much pressure? So now I have taken the knobs out of it and put bolts in it. Now I am using another mechanical advantage to try to do it, and it is still sliding off.
Eddie: So I took a couple of Sawzall blades, because they have high strength, carved in some teeth, and attached those to it. And I thought, okay, if I can put a little pressure on it, they actually bite into it. It was not perfect, because neither one of them was the same. The geometry did not match. But I was able to make it move. So that was exciting.
The Boat Geeks: You were on the right track. You could see there was something here.
Getting everything onto the center line
Eddie: And then I started stripping away bulkiness, trying to get everything off the center
line of the tool itself, so that you do not have knobs on the side. Because depending on the cam orientation, the knobs could be in a random spot. It is not like you just have an engine and an impeller pump with nothing around it.
Eddie: These engineers have decided to put hoses and whatever else in there. It is very
frustrating, or it is just the position of it. So we have made a tool that is refined enough that
you can do it with one hand.
"That's kind of ridiculous"
Eddie: With many iterations of that tool. There are some funny photos from when I made the
smaller one and thought, okay, I need to make a bigger one. The knob had grown in size. I showed Yami the one that had grown in size and she said, "that's kind of ridiculous." And I said, well, when you are building stuff and going through R&D you have to go through all these examples of getting through some of the ridiculousness. And I showed her some of the first ones. I have a box.
The Boat Geeks: Prototypes, right?
Eddie: And you have to do it wrong to figure out what is right, basically.
From water jet to lathe
Eddie: It got more refined, using one of the places water jetting to make two of the same ones,once I knew I wanted to keep the center line geometry and the bolt that winds them down to collapse the arms.
Eddie: Then it started to get more refined, spending more labor, using a non-CNC mill and lathe to do it. The amount of time it takes, the iterations of them, it took months of getting to the point where we are at now.
Showing the tool
The Boat Geeks: Can you grab a tool? We have got to show people this amazing tool. I have used it. It is wonderful. Even Lisa used it, right?
Eddie: So this is the standard. The smaller size, very compact. And then the larger one we have now, since the strong back portion of it is made CNC with ImpelPro on it too.
The Boat Geeks: I saw the pictures of the new version.
Eddie: We have been able to find a local company that does great work. They are small and they hold the same values that we do, of trying to make a very precision part. They care about the outcome of the tool.
The Boat Geeks: What a great and simple tool. I am very envious of somebody like yourself who can think of something like this and create it. I love the process by which you discovered how to design this and went through your various iterations. Easy to use, and like you said, you can do it with one hand. Just brilliant. It is the proverbial better mousetrap.
The spindly contraption
The Boat Geeks: I do not know how many impeller pullers have been invented over the years. I had one that came with a previous boat, and I went to try and use it. I think I ended up googling. Well, Google probably did not even exist. I Netscaped it, or AltaVista'd it, or whatever. But it was like, how do you use this thing? It was just this spindly contraption. I could not figure out how it worked. So, needle-nose pliers and a screwdriver and lots of cussing. And I really was not aware that you can score the inside of your pump, that you can create more problems.
The Seattle Boat Show
The Boat Geeks: And then a couple of years ago Yami reached out and said we are going to be at the Seattle Boat Show, would you be interested in coming down and taking a look? And of course, a new impeller puller, I am curious. So we went down. Eddie and Yami had a booth downstairs in the big main hall, and he showed me the tool and did a demo and pulled an impeller, and my jaw was like, oh my god. We ended up shooting a little Instagram and Facebook reel, a vertical, about 30 seconds.
A pull, on camera
Eddie: We will go ahead and stick it on there away from the cam. We will pick two spots. We
will slide it all the way in, just by hand, for that leader. So it is easy so far. By tightening
this up, we are setting the arms.
The Boat Geeks: Okay. And they are grabbing.
Eddie: Once that is done, we will tighten the rod with a 9/16. Go ahead and effortlessly wind
it out.
The Boat Geeks: It is coming out super easy. Wow. That is cool.
The Boat Geeks: All right. Eddie has invented a better mousetrap, the ImpelPro, at impelpro.com. And boy, did that little video have legs. A lot of people watched that, and it is
truly amazing.
What boaters actually say
The Boat Geeks: But I wonder, what reaction are you finding? You have got people who see the demonstration, buy the tool, use it, they love it. But in a general sense, the average boater, what has the reaction been?
Eddie: I go down to a lot of boats and see an older tool and ask them, have you used it? Well, no, I have not used it. Okay, do you cruise with your mechanic? No, I do not cruise with my mechanic.
Eddie: I try to do my best job to keep their boat so they do not have to do it. But we are
trying right now to inform people through YouTube and Instagram. I know at the show they do
different classes for people to learn more and be more aware of what is going on.
Eddie: The outcome for people using it has been great. Hey, I used it and it worked and I was
able to move on to my next task. I did not have to stop, take the pump off, or call someone like me to come down. I still do probably four or five boats a year where I go down and just do the impellers, or help them get them back in.
Eddie: But before, I was doing a lot more boats. I will still do them, but I am trying to help
people get to the point where they feel comfortable. It has been really good to see. We had one the other day where the guy said, this worked amazing, I would love to give a review to show more people that this is something you can do.
Bristol Bay: six hours to thirty minutes
Eddie: We had a couple of guys who are commercial painters, and he has a couple of Bristol Bay boats. He said, every other year I have had to take the whole pump off, and it is four or six hours. I buy this tool and I can have one of my deck hands do it in 30 minutes and we are back up and going.
The Boat Geeks: What a great testimony. I think it is all about raising awareness. People just
are not aware that there is a tool out there this easy to use and this efficient. It is a tool you
can buy that saves you time and saves you money. Time is money for a lot of people. There are so many projects on a boat where you start off with something small, you think it is going to be easy, and it leads to more and more money thrown into that hole in the water.
Boaters have opinions
The Boat Geeks: And Eddie and Yami have a bigger challenge than just getting the word out, because this tool works. There is a history of impeller pullers. They can work. They might work. Sometimes they do not work in every application. So you are swimming upstream with boaters, and boaters have opinions. Sometimes strong opinions, and they say impeller pullers do not work. Well, if you are one of those boaters, you need to try this.
Lisa's first impeller
The Boat Geeks: In fact, we made a video for our Boater Tested store. Lisa had never changed an impeller in her life. I do not even know if she had ever really seen one. We went downstairs into the engine room and she sat there on a little stool, used the tool, and pulled out her first impeller in about a minute and 45 seconds. And she was just like, wow. So yes, it is super easy, it is super efficient, and it really works.
The Boater Tested demo video plays.
Lisa removes an impeller in three steps while the hosts narrate: set the teeth between opposite vanes and hand-tighten the bearing, tighten the rod with a 9/16 socket or wrench, then remove the impeller. She finishes in under two minutes. The narration covers the risk of scoring the pump with pliers and screwdrivers, the danger of broken vane pieces reaching the heat exchanger, and the one-handed advantage in tight sailboat engine spaces. It notes the standard size fits impellers 1-9/16 to 2-9/16 and ships with two rods, one 4 inches and one 6-1/4 inches, and that the shorter rod was used here because of the oil cooler just after the pump.
This segment is summarized rather than transcribed. It is a separate Boater Tested production playing inside the episode, and its narration predates the patent grant.
Materials
The Boat Geeks: They are quality tools. You can tell. It is solidly made. It is not flimsy. It
is going to last you a long time.
Eddie: We want people to be able to pass it down. Grandpa had a boat, and hopefully you can use this. So we spent a lot of time on really quality materials. The stainless is 316L, the highest grade stainless you can get.
Eddie: It has a sealed bearing, which I will explain. As you are tightening the teeth down, you
are not actually feeling the load that is going through it. So it is hidden, but it is very much a
strong point of this tool, being able to use one hand.
Why one hand matters
Eddie: Not everyone has the grip strength to go down and do it. Like with your wife. She is not a professional hand wrestler, able to put 300 pounds of force into it. That is one of the nice things about this. Or when you are laying on your side, you cannot physically reach in with two hands.
The Boat Geeks: You have got no leverage.
Eddie: We wanted to make it so that everything is one movement. Putting it in is a movement. You can tighten it down with one movement. And then grab a 9/16, whether it is a wrench, a ratcheting wrench, or a socket that best fits, to pull it out so it is not in the way.
The Boat Geeks: That is really the beauty of the tool. The actual physical removal of an
impeller only requires ratcheting. You do not have to be strong.
What other mechanics say
The Boat Geeks: Are you getting reactions from mechanics who have been dealing with impellers for years and years and they find your tool?
Eddie: If you can get a mechanic to make a video, to show the happiness around some of these things. We have had some amazing videos of guys pulling them out, and you can tell they are genuinely happy.
Eddie: For me, I would go down to a boat, warm everything up, do oil samples, then change oil, change filters. I would always do impellers last, because if I have something that is hard...
The Boat Geeks: Put it off.
Eddie: Put it off. But to have someone respond with a video, and respond to us in such a
gracious manner, that we have made something that will help them. It is a great feeling knowing that we are able to make, like you said, a mousetrap that actually grabs hold of the thing and pulls it out.
Eddie: There is still some teaching to do with all the little bits and pieces. I think we are
going to get there. With it being a new tool, we have some great instructions and we are making videos trying to inform people. And Yami over here is doing a masterful job of managing the social media and the marketing.
Announcement one: the new version
The Boat Geeks: Eddie just mentioned the new tool, and at this moment we have two big
announcements. Number one, are you calling it version two, or the next generation? It is the same tool, but there are elements to the new one that are an improvement. Can you talk about that?
Eddie: We went through some, I would not say mishaps, but some growth on manufacturing. Now I think we are at a very high level that meets the rest of what we are trying to achieve. We had some arms that were cast, and you can still see on these ones, the ones I have been beating the heck out of, that they have a cast body. We have moved away from things that are cast, because the geometry was not staying right where we wanted it.
Eddie: With everything based off the center line of the tool, we were not able to hold the
right tolerance. Now, with the strong backs being machined to such a high level and the arms
finished out of billet, we are able to control the pieces of the tool better, and it makes assembly a lot easier too.
Eddie: Every one of these teeth is exactly the same. The angles of the arms are the same, and the distance between pins versus the larger threads of this M20 are the same too.
Seeing the name on it
Eddie: With anything there is growth to it, but also being able to put our name on it. That is
something we have been wanting to do forever. We kept asking, how are we going to stamp it in, or make a permanent mold? To see a machine quickly write our name into a tool has been just great.
The Boat Geeks: What a moment that must have been.
Eddie: It was awesome to see the first one come off, before it even had the holes or the
windows for the arms. And just to see it. It has been years, probably four years now. I think I am going on four seasons since the first Yanmar, or not Yanmar, Scania, that had a big impeller. I was looking at it like, how does this come out? I know how you got it in there. And that is one of the reasons the larger tool exists.
Eddie: So it is a wonderful time to be able to go down to a boat and go, I am going to win
against you.
The Scania
Eddie: Because the Scania that I did, I ended up taking a razor blade and cutting through all
the blades, just to try to get some relief. And then I had a smaller version of this tool, and I
jammed it on there with a couple of teeth, and slowly, half the time it would slip. But I am
watching this impeller that is three and a half inches long slowly come off. And I am thinking,
well, I do not know what else to do, because I tried all the other tools.
The Boat Geeks: Congratulations on that. I can very much feel how good that must have felt, to see your name on it, on something you have worked so hard on creating, inventing, producing, manufacturing, going through the hardships, figuring out ways to improve it. I bet you feel really proud about where the tool is today, and proud enough to put your name on it and stand by it.
Announcement two: Fisheries Supply
The Boat Geeks: That is one big announcement. Another one that deserves some fanfare is that very recently your tool is now in Fisheries Supply. That is a really big deal, because they have said, yeah, we really like this, we are totally confident in what this tool does, and we are going to market it for you. Congratulations. That is not easy.
Eddie: It has been great. We went in with a big pump where the impeller was more or less seized on there and was past its time. Went in, met with a couple of the guys, and just gave them the impeller and said, here is the tool and the pump. And they got to pull it off.
Eddie: From there it turned into, this last year I got to have a little tabletop at the
Fisheries Supply booth for the boat show, which was awesome. And they did the riggers event. I think they have 30 or 40 vendors in there, and I got to show it again.
Eddie: It has been really good to have those relationships with a bunch of people who are
boaters. Fisheries has been around for such a long time, and for being a one-store place, they have a huge presence.
The Boat Geeks: National footprint. Everybody in the area goes there. I would say if you have
any interest in getting one of these tools, and you should, go to Fisheries. It helps you if people buy it from Fisheries, because then they are going to want to supply more of them. It is a great way to support a local store and to support a local inventor and mechanic.
Eddie: It has been really good with the partnership with Fisheries. Talking to Alex, the owner,
he said they want to bring more pieces to the boating puzzle that solve someone's issue. That was
really cool to hear him say, that this is something that helps their customers.
A stranger in the aisle
Eddie: My shop is about a block away from Fisheries, which is not always a good thing. But I
was in there buying some switches, and a guy came in and pulled one of the part suppliers aside and said, hey, where is this tool? Then they complained that it was locked up, but I watched him walk down the aisle with the tool.
Eddie: And I said, good luck with your impeller puller. He said, oh, I heard it is a good one.
I said, I hope it is. I invented it. And he goes, what? So we stopped and had a conversation around it, and I explained more in depth how it worked. What a great feeling, to know that someone had gone to the store just for that piece.
Eddie: It is a complex problem when things do not work. Something like this makes it simple.
All I have to do is pull this out. So with this tool we are providing a level of simplicity around
such a complex, negative task. I hope he got to go down to his boat that day and pull it out and it was not something to write home about.
The Boat Geeks: A normally nightmare task, made simple.
What is next
The Boat Geeks: Are you going to be out there showing this to more people? Any upcoming boat shows?
Eddie: We are going to try to do more. We are working on moving the product into more boat
stores down the West Coast and up the east side. As there is more awareness of the tool being different. People see it on a shelf and think, okay, it is the same as what is there. So there is the informing part.
Eddie: But getting to work through Fisheries and show them that not all tools are the same, that it is a specialty tool. I think we are going to be able to help more people, not only in the US but expand. There are so many boats in Europe.
The Boat Geeks: Worldwide. This tool should be everywhere.
Eddie: We get people asking from Australia, hey, how do we get this here, what can we do? And Yami has been very good about logistically helping those people. There are not just boats in Seattle. They are everywhere. And it is the same thing: I had to spend so much time trying to get it out, and I did not get it out. Well, you should have got the right tool.
The Boat Geeks: It is a universal issue for boaters all around the world. So if somebody wants to see this tool in action, do you have links?
Eddie: Impelpro.com.
The Boat Geeks: There you go. Lots of great images, how-tos, a bunch of videos. All you have to do is go visit, look at a few of them, and you are like, wow, that really works.
How often to pull the impeller
The Boat Geeks: How often should somebody be checking or pulling the impeller?
Eddie: I call the impeller the heart of the system. That is what is moving everything to keep it
cool. There are some differences in what people say. I am always trying to get people to do it once a year.
Eddie: The idea is that if we do it once a year, we know that last year, when we did it once a
year, it did not fail. And if we can keep that same scenario up, keeping your boat off the bottom with mud. There are some rivers with a lot of silt that can destroy these faster.
Eddie: But if we are doing them once a year, we are also opening things up and looking at it.
Sometimes people push it off a little bit and then more issues arise. So I try to push for once a year.
Eddie: And I have not come back to impellers that have gone through a normal year cycle that are absolutely blown apart. Some of them have wear. The smaller ones, for whatever reason, like on generators, seem to not do as well, but they are still working.
Eddie: Say we did not do it that year, and you go out and do another year, and there is 70
percent of it left, or 60 percent if you want to put a percentage on it. Now we blew it all apart,
and then there is a story. So if we can keep the heart going and moving well, it becomes a
[unclear] event.
The Boat Geeks: Preventative.
The sample
The Boat Geeks: You have got a sample. Can you pull up the impeller?
Eddie: That is it. It is ready to go.
The Boat Geeks: Look at this, everybody. This is what can happen when you put it off. And it is understandable why people put it off, because it has been such a pain in the butt to do. But now with your tool, yearly maintenance is a great idea, because it is simple to do and you avoid so many other problems. It is insurance. Preventative medicine for your boat. With a tool as easy as nyours to use, there is no reason not to do it annually, like so many other things.
The Boat Geeks: I am thinking I am going to have our daughter change the next one. That is a good video. My wife did it. If a 16-year-old can do it, anybody can change it.
Close
The Boat Geeks: Eddie, thank you for being here. Yami, thank you for being here. Thanks for
being in our studio audience. It is a pleasure to bring a tool like yours out to everybody and to
raise awareness. Keep up the great work. I hope you get into more stores. I hope you get into the hands of more mechanics and change their lives in terms of changing impellers.
The Boat Geeks: Just changing impellers, we are changing lives. And really, that is what it is.
Because just like he said, when he was doing the work and he knew how, he would always put it off, because it is just a drag. Little improvements in our lives make a huge difference. Congratulations on such a great tool. Congratulations on version two, and on getting your name stamped on there.
Eddie: I am very excited to be here with you guys today, because I think you are the other part of ushering in the next generation, and unboxing some of these issues, and trying to help more people get on the water. Like you said, we are dealing with people who go by and we wave to each other. To be able to get one more person waving to another person, or get someone new and they are like, did that boat just wave at me? And you are like, the whole boat.
Eddie: So it is great. And we have such a great area up here to do that. Being able to bring
more people in, it is kind of like a sport. Once people get to go out on the water, throw a life
jacket on, jump in, whatever it is, it is contagious.
The Boat Geeks: We are always in support of more people getting out here on the water,
especially in the Pacific Northwest, but wherever you are in the world. We have a lot of people watching in Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, England. This is a great tool not just for the Pacific Northwest, but wherever boats are.
The Boat Geeks: We had a wonderful time with you, Eddie. Thank you for being here.
Eddie: Thank you.
The Boat Geeks: And until next time, whatever floats your boat.
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THE TOOL
ImpelPro is a patented impeller removal and replacement tool for inboard engines and generators, made in the USA in two sizes. The teeth grip the face of the impeller rather than the housing, and the sealed bearing keeps the pull centered on the shaft so nothing levers against the pump. Choose Your Impelpro Puller
ABOUT THE MECHANIC
Eddie Protzeller is a professional marine mechanic and inventor of the ImpelPro® Impeller Puller, with 15+ years working on tugboats, yachts, inboard engines, and marine generators. He started in commercial work at 19, spent years at Western Towboat, and keeps a shop at North Lake Shipyard in Ballard.
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