Go Back  Offshoreonly.com > Technical > Drives and Lower Units
X Power Drive .... X-Power Drive ....XPowerdrive >

X Power Drive .... X-Power Drive ....XPowerdrive

Notices

X Power Drive .... X-Power Drive ....XPowerdrive

Thread Tools
 
Old 02-04-2012, 06:41 PM
  #11  
Registered
Thread Starter
iTrader: (5)
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Traverse City MI
Posts: 3,592
Received 278 Likes on 97 Posts
Default

Originally Posted by offshorexcursion
What really got my interest..again...was this Cig mentioned in another thread....

http://www.offshoreonly.com/classifi...o43448-en.html

My question is, What speeds do other Cigs run with similar HP and other drives. This would give us a good idea of the speed increase with this drive???? Only Prob we have is verifying the actual HP of this boat since the engines are not stock.
Still trying to find a good comparison to this Cig. One with bravos and 750-800 hp

Mitch has a sweet 2001 38 with similiar horsepower N/A motors and #6 Drives. Awesome boat! I personally have been in Mitch's boat at 97-100.
offshorexcursion is offline  
Old 02-05-2012, 10:18 AM
  #12  
Registered
iTrader: (3)
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Chattanooga
Posts: 999
Likes: 0
Received 1 Like on 1 Post
Default

Originally Posted by GPM
I think he could flood the market if the price was reasonable, make his money on quantity.
I sure wish he would go this route!
TCBoss302 is offline  
Old 02-05-2012, 12:20 PM
  #13  
Registered
 
dkwestern's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Lake St. Clair
Posts: 2,975
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Default

Originally Posted by offshorexcursion
Still trying to find a good comparison to this Cig. One with bravos and 750-800 hp

Mitch has a sweet 2001 38 with similiar horsepower N/A motors and #6 Drives. Awesome boat! I personally have been in Mitch's boat at 97-100.
Out of Control has Zul 700+ and some kind of bravo. Check lipships site, 2003 38. runs over 100 mph.
dkwestern is offline  
Old 02-05-2012, 07:13 PM
  #14  
Registered
 
Tres's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Ocala, FL/Union Mills NC
Posts: 1,750
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Default

I have 2 of them on a Spectre with tw 800s they work just fantastic. I have looked after them several times no problems work as they should, Its faster than the sister boat with Bravos. Its cheaper than #6 conversion. I only worry about helmet carrying the weight. Real dry sump.
Tres is offline  
Old 02-12-2012, 08:04 PM
  #15  
Registered
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 102
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Default

Hello All,
I totally understand all of what you said, and I in part agree except for the fact that I did the entire project from start to finish. Here is what happened on route to designing and building a true 3 stage dry-sump outdrive, that is by far the lightest outdrive able to handle 1600 hp.
Food for thought a number six drive assembly weighs 645lbs and on our dyno consumes almost 90 hp to turn it 7000 rpm. The Bravo drive consumes 44 hp @ 7000 rpm and weighs in at under 65lbs. The X Power Drive consumes 11.5 hp at 7000rpm, and we have had versions that consumed 9.5 hp at 7000rpm but have now settled on the 11.5 hp at 7000 rpm version. It weighs in at 202 lbs. The drive has 254 parts inside which is far more than a bravo hence the increase in weight, also the parts are far larger to handle the increased power and torque. Okay now on to the price.

I set out to build a drive that would cost $15,000. that was a full 3 stage dry-sump version with built in oil tank, unlike a number six drive that is only dry-sumped upper and all the oil is in the lower unit, that could handle 1500+ hp that would directly bolt on to a bravo gimbal assembly with no modification, that would be faster than any other drive on the market. Quickly I noticed that the quality of the parts that would be required to do the job cost far more than what currently exists in the industry. Gears would need to be manufactured by companies that build gears and shafts for Formula 1 racing which is the highest technology standard to date. The materials used are not items off the shelf and required our own designs in very limited quantity. The next problem is I could only manage to produce gears and shafts in quantities of 30 due to the cost, and all the other parts in quantities of 50. If you were mercury marine you would produce in huge quantities and thus you would create ways to produce parts in very fast and economical ways which costs millions.

So now here is the problem. I am one guy that decided to fix a huge problem in the industry, and it took 4 solid years of my life and a huge investment to take it to market. Am I a business graduate from Yale? No, but I am a lover of boating and hated coming home on the back side of a rope. I have an engineering background, and access to top notch engineering, which included tons of CFD modeling and wind tunnel access for the lower unit's hydrodynamic design. Are they too expensive for the industry? At first glance it could appear that way, but if you ask our customers, they feel it was well worth the investment. Do I wish I could produce them cheaper? Yes! But not for the reason you would think. The actual reason would be, so that everyone would be able to enjoy boating as I have finally been able to with these drives. An amazing weekend, without the constant fear of blowing up your drive. If you try to analyze it or rationalize it, every trip you take boating could cost between $1,500 to $5,000 per weekend. if you break a drive and ruin a weekend it costs the price of the weekend as well as the drive. Do that just a few times and you have the X Power Drive. Not to mention your wife and friends giving you that look of disappointment on the long tow back. The drive is not a consumable item. When you are done with your current boat, you can put your old drives back on and take the X Power Drives to your next boat.

To date we have never had a customer ever pay for any repairs to their drive, Ever! it's the relationships we've made and the joy we have brought to people that is really amazing.

Could we ever compete with Mercury or Imco on total sales? Not a chance. Mercury is amazing, and Fred at Imco is a pioneer in the industry that knows his clients. I am a small niche company that set out to solve a problem, and did.

I wanted to let people know that it was impossible to
produce such a technically advanced product, without the cost involved.

I felt compleled to provide this information to answer these questions that are out there in the hope that with this understanding, people will see how this came about and why they are priced as they are.

Now to address the final issue which is the gimbal assembly. The bravo Hp gimbal is a weak link with the gimbal ring. We have seen them fail quite a few times. To address that we offer a stainless gimbal ring that we warranty for life. You don't hear that very often in the boating industry. Have we ever seen one fail since we came out with the ring? The answer is a solid NO. We have never seen a gimbal assembly with our stainless ring fail.

This is what it will take to get a drive.

If your boat has a bravo gimbal assembly already then this is the breakdown.
$35,000. What does that include
1) Complete drive with any drive X dimension spacer between
Zero and 5 inches.
2) Stainless gimbal ring assembly and all necessary parts to
install.
3) Mounting studs for drive.
4) Any engineering we could possibly offer night or day. I will
give you my personal home phone number and you can call
anytime.
5) Biggest warranty in the industry.
6) I will even trade out your spacer to a different size for free
twice. No other company would ever think of doing that,
considering a spacer kit is over $1000.

If you need a bravo Hp Gimbal assembly we can offer these for under $3,000 with purchase of the drive.

If you ever can use a drive or any assistance please feel free to call me anytime.

Best wishes,

Bill Auberlen
CEO X Power Drive
805-320-5631
bauberlen is offline  
Old 02-13-2012, 06:08 AM
  #16  
Registered
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Denmark and hopefully some place nice
Posts: 1,852
Likes: 0
Received 1 Like on 1 Post
Default

Originally Posted by bauberlen
Hello All,
I totally understand all of what you said, and I in part agree except for the fact that I did the entire project from start to finish. Here is what happened on route to designing and building a true 3 stage dry-sump outdrive, that is by far the lightest outdrive able to handle 1600 hp.
Food for thought a number six drive assembly weighs 645lbs and on our dyno consumes almost 90 hp to turn it 7000 rpm. The Bravo drive consumes 44 hp @ 7000 rpm and weighs in at under 65lbs. The X Power Drive consumes 11.5 hp at 7000rpm, and we have had versions that consumed 9.5 hp at 7000rpm but have now settled on the 11.5 hp at 7000 rpm version. It weighs in at 202 lbs. The drive has 254 parts inside which is far more than a bravo hence the increase in weight, also the parts are far larger to handle the increased power and torque. Okay now on to the price.

I set out to build a drive that would cost $15,000. that was a full 3 stage dry-sump version with built in oil tank, unlike a number six drive that is only dry-sumped upper and all the oil is in the lower unit, that could handle 1500+ hp that would directly bolt on to a bravo gimbal assembly with no modification, that would be faster than any other drive on the market. Quickly I noticed that the quality of the parts that would be required to do the job cost far more than what currently exists in the industry. Gears would need to be manufactured by companies that build gears and shafts for Formula 1 racing which is the highest technology standard to date. The materials used are not items off the shelf and required our own designs in very limited quantity. The next problem is I could only manage to produce gears and shafts in quantities of 30 due to the cost, and all the other parts in quantities of 50. If you were mercury marine you would produce in huge quantities and thus you would create ways to produce parts in very fast and economical ways which costs millions.

So now here is the problem. I am one guy that decided to fix a huge problem in the industry, and it took 4 solid years of my life and a huge investment to take it to market. Am I a business graduate from Yale? No, but I am a lover of boating and hated coming home on the back side of a rope. I have an engineering background, and access to top notch engineering, which included tons of CFD modeling and wind tunnel access for the lower unit's hydrodynamic design. Are they too expensive for the industry? At first glance it could appear that way, but if you ask our customers, they feel it was well worth the investment. Do I wish I could produce them cheaper? Yes! But not for the reason you would think. The actual reason would be, so that everyone would be able to enjoy boating as I have finally been able to with these drives. An amazing weekend, without the constant fear of blowing up your drive. If you try to analyze it or rationalize it, every trip you take boating could cost between $1,500 to $5,000 per weekend. if you break a drive and ruin a weekend it costs the price of the weekend as well as the drive. Do that just a few times and you have the X Power Drive. Not to mention your wife and friends giving you that look of disappointment on the long tow back. The drive is not a consumable item. When you are done with your current boat, you can put your old drives back on and take the X Power Drives to your next boat.

To date we have never had a customer ever pay for any repairs to their drive, Ever! it's the relationships we've made and the joy we have brought to people that is really amazing.

Could we ever compete with Mercury or Imco on total sales? Not a chance. Mercury is amazing, and Fred at Imco is a pioneer in the industry that knows his clients. I am a small niche company that set out to solve a problem, and did.

I wanted to let people know that it was impossible to
produce such a technically advanced product, without the cost involved.

I felt compleled to provide this information to answer these questions that are out there in the hope that with this understanding, people will see how this came about and why they are priced as they are.

Now to address the final issue which is the gimbal assembly. The bravo Hp gimbal is a weak link with the gimbal ring. We have seen them fail quite a few times. To address that we offer a stainless gimbal ring that we warranty for life. You don't hear that very often in the boating industry. Have we ever seen one fail since we came out with the ring? The answer is a solid NO. We have never seen a gimbal assembly with our stainless ring fail.

This is what it will take to get a drive.

If your boat has a bravo gimbal assembly already then this is the breakdown.
$35,000. What does that include
1) Complete drive with any drive X dimension spacer between
Zero and 5 inches.
2) Stainless gimbal ring assembly and all necessary parts to
install.
3) Mounting studs for drive.
4) Any engineering we could possibly offer night or day. I will
give you my personal home phone number and you can call
anytime.
5) Biggest warranty in the industry.
6) I will even trade out your spacer to a different size for free
twice. No other company would ever think of doing that,
considering a spacer kit is over $1000.

If you need a bravo Hp Gimbal assembly we can offer these for under $3,000 with purchase of the drive.

If you ever can use a drive or any assistance please feel free to call me anytime.

Best wishes,

Bill Auberlen
CEO X Power Drive
805-320-5631
Interesting info. One thing I'm thinking about is the coupler. Now the drive itself is strong,, but are the shaft and coupler assembly strong enough when used with and without boxes? Who would run such a drive without a box? I mean one of the things that works well for the Indy, ASD, BPM ect. are the naturally build in setback. For maximum performance, you will in many cases need a 7" or 12" setback. Not saying it won't work, but if you are running 1600 hp, how is the bravo style coupler assembly adressed?

Does the X-P drive has a stock x-dim of 16.13/16" without spacers? If so, can you still spin an 18" prop diameter? How do you compare it in terms of hydrodynamic drag and efficiency to a true surface drive like the ASD and BPM drives?

Last edited by A.O. Razor; 02-13-2012 at 06:15 AM.
A.O. Razor is offline  
Old 02-13-2012, 09:08 AM
  #17  
Registered
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 102
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Default

When you refer to the coupler, if sounds like you mean the drive shaft assembly itself. The u-joint assembly has been maintained in order to fit the bravo gimbal assembly. This was a big concern for us as in terms of outright numbers it didn't look as if it was robust enough. In the beginning we made our own very high tech (material wise) u-joint assemblies and tested them side by side with a standard assembly. In all the time we have never seen either fail. We have seen u-joint assemblies fail in the industry, but for different reasons, neglect, water, rust, etc, but if maintained properly they are amazingly strong. If you were talking about the coupler/spacer assembly to maintain the proper x dimension then that is a total non issue.

We have boats with and without boxes running the drive. The X power drive's propeller is already farther rearward to start with so it would already be like running a (don't quote me) 10 inch setback compared to a bravo, and a 4 inch further rearward than a number 6. We have done many boat conversions from bravo to X Power with no standoff boxes, and have always seen substantial speed gains. It is possible that had the customer installed stand off boxes we could have gained more.

You could spin a 19 in propeller in the shortest configuration. In terms of comparing to a surface style drive, the X Power is very much a surface style drive. We did months and months of CFD modeling on the lower unit in order to come up with a very efficient design for the lower unit, then we confirmed it in the wind tunnel. You should have seen some of the skeg designs, they were amazing and had far less drag, but in life we had to compromise mainly for stability on single engine designs. The early drives had a stainless removable skeg that you could try different designs, but was to costly.

Now comparing to bpm or asd I couldn't tell you as I didn't do a study on that. But we did use the number six, nxt, and imco lower units in our study and the information that you learn is pretty cool.

Here is a link to show our surface drive in action, and the efforts we go through to learn our product. Give it a minute to get going and you will see this is a run to 170mph

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuDiYtGAp3U

I hope this information helps.
bauberlen is offline  
Old 02-13-2012, 09:32 AM
  #18  
Registered
iTrader: (3)
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Chattanooga
Posts: 999
Likes: 0
Received 1 Like on 1 Post
Default

Originally Posted by bauberlen
When you refer to the coupler, if sounds like you mean the drive shaft assembly itself. The u-joint assembly has been maintained in order to fit the bravo gimbal assembly. This was a big concern for us as in terms of outright numbers it didn't look as if it was robust enough. In the beginning we made our own very high tech (material wise) u-joint assemblies and tested them side by side with a standard assembly. In all the time we have never seen either fail. We have seen u-joint assemblies fail in the industry, but for different reasons, neglect, water, rust, etc, but if maintained properly they are amazingly strong. If you were talking about the coupler/spacer assembly to maintain the proper x dimension then that is a total non issue.

We have boats with and without boxes running the drive. The X power drive's propeller is already farther rearward to start with so it would already be like running a (don't quote me) 10 inch setback compared to a bravo, and a 4 inch further rearward than a number 6. We have done many boat conversions from bravo to X Power with no standoff boxes, and have always seen substantial speed gains. It is possible that had the customer installed stand off boxes we could have gained more.

You could spin a 19 in propeller in the shortest configuration. In terms of comparing to a surface style drive, the X Power is very much a surface style drive. We did months and months of CFD modeling on the lower unit in order to come up with a very efficient design for the lower unit, then we confirmed it in the wind tunnel. You should have seen some of the skeg designs, they were amazing and had far less drag, but in life we had to compromise mainly for stability on single engine designs. The early drives had a stainless removable skeg that you could try different designs, but was to costly.

Now comparing to bpm or asd I couldn't tell you as I didn't do a study on that. But we did use the number six, nxt, and imco lower units in our study and the information that you learn is pretty cool.

Here is a link to show our surface drive in action, and the efforts we go through to learn our product. Give it a minute to get going and you will see this is a run to 170mph

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuDiYtGAp3U

I hope this information helps.
Approximately how many drives have you sold? No failures is great, but if you only have a dozen X-drives out there, I'm not sure people are going to buy into all you're saying, not unlike what we're seeing with the new -4 SCX drive, the jury is still out.

All you say is great, but until you offer these at a reasonable price, your product will only appeal to a VERY small population of boaters. If someone has the funds to spend 75K plus on drives, I'm sure they're not looking at bravo boats.

Have you ever thought about building the same drive with cost saving modifications that would allow the drive to be rated to, let's just say 1,000 HP, so that it would be affordable compared to the competition?
TCBoss302 is offline  
Old 02-13-2012, 10:25 AM
  #19  
Registered
 
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Delaware
Posts: 1,194
Likes: 0
Received 1 Like on 1 Post
Default

Originally Posted by TCBoss302
Approximately how many drives have you sold? No failures is great, but if you only have a dozen X-drives out there, I'm not sure people are going to buy into all you're saying, not unlike what we're seeing with the new -4 SCX drive, the jury is still out.

All you say is great, but until you offer these at a reasonable price, your product will only appeal to a VERY small population of boaters. If someone has the funds to spend 75K plus on drives, I'm sure they're not looking at bravo boats.

Have you ever thought about building the same drive with cost saving modifications that would allow the drive to be rated to, let's just say 1,000 HP, so that it would be affordable compared to the competition?
Exactly right. In particular the last paragraph. Buying just one of these drives would be a crazy amount for me to spend on one drive. i didnt even spend that much on my truck.

Hell, if it could be built with a warranty but was only rated for 800hp, and was priced accordingly, I am sure it could be a competitor. Let's be honest, not many of us Bravo boaters are ever going to run over 1000hp.

Bill, I think you have a great product, that certainly meets your goals. I wish I could afford one to try out, because I feel that my hull is a perfect style for a surface drive in a single vee. You also probably have one of, if not THE fastest bravo style boat, and if you have truly had no drive failures to date with that kind of power, that is an accomplishment.
Philm is offline  
Old 02-13-2012, 11:30 AM
  #20  
Registered
Thread Starter
iTrader: (5)
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Traverse City MI
Posts: 3,592
Received 278 Likes on 97 Posts
Default

Thanks for addressing this thread with some great knowledge and explanations. I think most of us understand where you are coming from but even so just can not fathom the price.

Everything you have taught us, your entire web site, videos, and the whole principle behind the X-power drive "sounds" perfect. BUT we need to see it in real world applications. Some proof. Head to head comparison.

My whole purpose of this thread was FIRST....can we prove how good the X-power drive is? Once we know how great it is THEN we can start to argue the price, or agree with it!
offshorexcursion is offline  


Contact Us - Archive - Advertising - Cookie Policy - Privacy Statement - Terms of Service

Copyright © 2024 MH Sub I, LLC dba Internet Brands. All rights reserved. Use of this site indicates your consent to the Terms of Use.