lowflyin

Thanks Joe, I'll be calling you soon

Mr Gadgets

Rage,
Royal Purple is another synthetic oil. I ran into it in the industrial arena. They made claims that it would do wonderful things. I tried it in my outdrive and measured a 12* decrease in top cap temps. Back then they didnt have the thermocouples available to plug into the drive as they now do. I have used it for years and I have friends and customers that have used it.. I also have customers that use Redline.. I dont care for it because it is so hard to clean up and it messy... BUT.. it seems to work well and so does the Royal Purple.
It was stated on a thread some time back that they all have their pros... some handle things better than others due to the properties of the oil. Merc's HP is a synthinetic, I believe and it is suppose to handle anything you through at it.... My opinion is that they all work when changed at decent intervals. When I build a XR drive, I recommend the oil be changed at 5 hrs, 15hrs and then at 20-25 from there on. The XR gears and the lower gears give up metal until they are broken in.. and then it slows. If you run that very long the tiny metal peices will marr up the surface of the cone and roller in a tappered bearing. Best to get it out of there and keep the oil clean..
I dont believe I have seen the flat spots that Joe is referring to. But then I have not looked for them. And I am not saying that Joe is incorrect. When the bearings in a drive are preloaded you can feel if they have any problems with them and it usually shows up on the torque gauge when setting the rolling torque. When I get into a drive, I always change all the bearings.. as a rule of thumb. No sense being in there if your not going to make it new. Unless of course it is just an inspection tear down, and the bearings look and feel good. And I am not saying that bearings dont have flat spots. I generally see drives that are so worn out that all the bearings are pitted from metal being crushed in them or it has been grenaded due to over powering or abuse.
The clutch issue.. well I havent seen that one either due to Redline or RP.. I have seen clutch damage when some one shifts into gear above an idle.. that can flatten the ribs on the cone and damage the gear itself.. Have I had complaints of problems of shifting.. not if it is setup correctly and the parts are not worn, etc..

So it all comes down to who is your customer, how do they use it and what do they like.. I run the RP and my own additive and run it for about 50hrs before draining.. that 25hr mark always seems to sneak up me. So far so good.. but then I can rebuild my own drive and I like to see what effect things have on it..

GOODT

Well said Mr Gadgets, the flat spots I am reffering to and I have seen are in the pinion shaft (vertical ) in the uncaged needles and by the time I have gotten them they where done they stop spining because they are not a preloaded bearing so they do need a little friction to roll correctly.. also the cone clutch uses friction to engauge you all be the judge common physics if somthing needs friction to work then 0 friction wont work as well and yes 0 friction means less wear but no wear doesnt mean that its working right, im not saying the drive will self destruct im just saying I wont put it in my boat and if a customer wants it in his he will have to take it to someone else because I treat my customers boats as I would my own!

Panther

There's no such thing as zero friction.

Mr Gadgets

Thanks for bringing that to my attention Joe, I will take a closer look at the needles in that bearing from now on.. And your right, no preload on that one.

Dick

Downtown42

I've heard Merc lube will react better with any water that sneaks in.

GOODT

panther, check the red line bottle it says right on it "0" friction

Panther

I know but I don't believe it. Scientifically, I don't think there is anything with a true "0" friction. If there was, stuff would last forever and we would have absolutely no heat when the drive is running. There's always some kind of friction going on.

Its funny we're talking about the that bearing. The two times that I blew my drives this summer those bearings were totally wiped out and this was with the merc. hi-po gearlube.

Anyway, my guess is the tolerances were never set properly when the drive was assembled. I chucked some teeth both times, so when the second drive was rebuilt I had them take a little bit of lash out and tighten everything up a hair.

Thanks for your advice this summer!!

Rage

Mr Gadgets,

Do the pinion gears in a Bravo 1x (with the needle bearings described as experiencing flat spoting) actually revolve around a shaft or do they just cycle back and forth as the pinon gears in an automotive differential when going in a straight line with equal rolling radius tires or the needle brearings in a u-joint?

GOODT

rage the pinion gear is mounted to the bottom of the shaft unlike rear end pinion gears there is only one