New drives are konrad ace with shorty. Drive shaft to propeller shaft distance is 21".

Konrad diagram with hp lowers has a 15" xdim. That puts my prop @ 6" below hull with shorty which seems to deep. For reference, I calculated my trs to be about 8" prop shaft under hull.

I was thinking of putting the props @ 3" under hull, which gives me 18" xdim. I found a thread from skramer where he put a shorty on with no extension box & running props 3.5" under hull. So seems I'm in ballpark. Or is this too shallow? Ide rather not get every last mph in order to have it plane easier.

With the notched transom I believe that 3.5"-4" below the bottom is the sweet spot. I have a friend that had a speedmaster Café with the drives 1.5" below and it was hard to keep on plane at slow speeds and had terrible slip numbers. We moved them down to 3" below and it runs much better now. If we could have gone lower without glass work we would have. Also this came from Scot Smith who worked at Cigarette and set up many Cafe's. He said Bravo, TRS, Speedmaster all ran best with the drives deeper. my $.02

Thank you for that info. I was told that the water level "rises" as you get further from the transom as the hull is not displacing it as much any longer. But i have no clue if this is .5" or 1" etc in rise. I figured if i set them higher, i can always space down. If i use my original TRS height, it would put the props about 4.5" below hull, but again i dont know what the real depth would be when sitting off the extension boxes.

i know i know totally different drive, different boat and so on, this is just a reference shot and prop centerline is 4 3/8 inches

took the pic with the grid option on, its a pretty square shot, move the pic around you can line up the ruler with the top of the screen and see any x you want.

get some good pics of the drives boxes and boat posted up.

Does your Cafe have a notched transom? I see Cig 3 referred to a notch. I also have a Cafe with a notch.

No notch in mine.

Where did you finally decide on mounting the drives?

Decided to be lazy & just play it safe. Going to use the same engine mount heights, which puts the drives about 4.6" below. If it struggles to get on plane or other side effects, then i can always use spacers to bring it down more.

Did you buy your Konrads new from them? I currently have TRS on my Cafe, so far so good but have kicked around options if mine go bad.
My Cafe has a notch so I am curious how yours will run with the boxes and stock X.