I'm going to have cup added to the hammer. Will see what that does.
What's strange to me is that as a stage 2, it was fine. But now, with 8hp more and 5ft/lbs of torque more, I'm having issues.

What's the result?

Shipped the hammer to LA last week and it shipped back out to me this morning. Should have it by Thursday to test.

I'm new here but have been following your problem. As a bass tournament director for over 4 years for one of the more prominent trails, I have seen a lot of motor issues, although they were traditional outboards, the consept is the same. If you are blowing out the prop, no matter how high or low you have it trimmed, you are over powering the prop. If the issue only occured when trim up high, then I would think it were a transom issue, but since it's occurring at all levels, your prop isnt getting enough bite. Having your prop reworked with a deeper cup should (theoretically) solve the problem. How has your reworked prop performed?

If the reworked prop doesn't work , before you cut your transom down try and find a manual jack plate to ajust the height of your motor. Makes some mark on your transom to know how far you dropped your motor so if this is the case you will know how much to cut off.

The reworked prop seems to be way better... No cavitation. However, it might have too much cup. Seems like its keeping the motor from turning the rpm's it was able to before... I will say this though, I have not had a chance to run it by myself. I received the prop just in time for the tournament this past weekend and only was able to try it with all gear + 4 guys + fish (one load of 104 fish & one load of 106 fish)... So definitely was only able to test under massive load. Best we did was scouting on Friday night (no fish, just gear and 4 guys)... 19mph, but only 3400 rpm's... Definitely not going to cut it.

BUT.... no cavitation.

So, at this point thinking maybe a little less cup, but want to see what it does by myself before we decide.

Sounds to me like the motor isn't the prop blowing beast you thought it was, huh? I'm with MSM or MitchV, gotta be either hull or drivetrain related. Probably wasting your time with the prop game.

One of these days, you'll finally have enough power and the right setup to make that big single rig run like you always wanted it to...and you're gonna look around at the pile of broken parts and receipts it took to get it there, and you're gonna wonder why you didn't just build a dual rig.

so what did u get done to it? Prop tuning is hard and that's what it sounds like(to much cup) Did u try running your motor in a different trim pin hole?

Any luck