If all you are looking for is the rooster tail, bravo drives can do that. Our Gladiator throws a nice tail up to around 70mph, regardless of trim. Here is our Gladiator and the Miccosukee Indian Gaming Fountain before the start in Daytona this past year. There is a sweet rooster tail on just about all of the Super V boats. :eek:

looks more like a Duck Tail to me.:D

:D :D That's a good one!

BPM drives on an MTI. Beefy, simple and cheap....

Thanks Rik. So basically what you are saying is that modern hulls' better designs lend themselves to surface piercing drives? Cool.

Another question, Rik -- As you might figure from the screen name, I have Kaama drives on my boat. I noticed that Arneson drives use a ball and socket where the Kaamas use the U-joint and boot. Any real advantahe or disadvantage to either aproach?

A Quote from the Weissman Site:
Unfortunately for any potentially new customers that would like to race in the APBA Offshore LLC, our drives are now "Too Radical" to be allowed on ANY new boats!
Eventhough they are proven faster, safer, more durable and more effiecient than the competiton, "They don't conform to the looks and functions of our competitors."
In other words, our drives are better, therefore they are illegal!

Any comments from anyone?
(Somebody get me some popcorn.;) )

I think that had to do with Mercury having purchased the rule that everybody must runa #6. The only current exception is Tommy Bahamma who is grandfathered in. They are also receiving a hefty weight penalty.

The one issue that I've heard about the Weissman is that they don't offer a reverse rotation drive. I don't know if it's true or not, but that could be an issue on a twin drive application. Suppose you could always reverse rotate the engine.

Now Luca oil is running a Weissman, but they are doing it in P2 class where anything goes.

Pulsedrive
 

I can include this photo on a history thread because this project is getting OLD!

:D

We made the drives identical so that there was no need to carry 2 spare drives. We change rotation with a dropbox like other surface drives.

The dropboxes we made for the trimax and Bpm\arneson plug all have ratio and counter rotation and offset. i.e. Tommy Bahama, Jotun, Victory, Platinum.

The Kaama and WSD and WMD drives are stern surface drives. The drives can run parallel with the water. That is the difference between ours and the rest. The WMD can be run sub-surface also.

We had some trouble (pinching and splitting) with the Kaama boot that we used on the WSD so we are re-tooling the front of the drive to accept the Accordian type boot and gimbal that we are using on the WMD.

Tommy Bahama retired.
Nigel has been running in SV as well.

pat W

What's the biggest downside for surface drives and why don't you see more of them?

I think the main reason you don't see more is because Merc, who builds most engines, doesn't sell a surface drive per se, and they sell the engine/drive packages.