Does wet sump six contain the oil in the drive itself.And a dry sump have a externall oil supply with a pump???? I guess the advantage of a dry sump is ??no oil sloshing around in the drive to create friction.Could someone steer me straight. Thanks JOHN

NO,,both have it in the drive ,,thats why a dry sump is not really a tru drysump,,only the upper is dry and sprayed on the gears from the lower !!!

The only tru drysump is a Weismann !!

The oil in the drysump six is below the spur gears and the lower gearset is turning slower and are smaller. The gears in the lower also tend to sling the oil out and run partially dry. The Weismann version works well, but the differences are very small, if even measureable, in use.

Weisman basically "invented" the #6 dry sump. Pat had a really good write up on the whole saga with Zero Defect. I copied this reply to me from Pat from Performance Boats website:

We ran the 1996 season with Zerodefect with our dry-sump #6 drives and 3-speed semiautomatic transmissions. We won 11 out of 11 races that season. In end of 1996 we were written out of the rules in open class. We also dominated modified class with a 36 skater called Ragamuffin/Peppers (now In-the-Red).

In 2000 The LLC took over apba. They stated that you had to be an OEM manufacturer to race in Supercat.

In 2000 we came out with the WSD drives on a 40 skater called Ragamuffin. In its first race out here we lapped the field. I set the engines in as low as possible and made offset FNR boxes to get back to the drives. It was a very good package. By mid season the boat was purchaced by WHM. We had another boat that year called Tommy Bahama. The LLC changed the rules to only allow #6 drives because of how much better our products were compared to the #6.

In 2000 we still won the US1 title with Don Q and our grandfathered #6 dry-sump drives (Now JD Byrider)

Then we did the Ettore boat with the inline engines and offset transmissions and the WSD drives. They soon banned the inline insallation and the drives and made it bravo/6 only.

In 2006 OSS tried to get rid of our dry-sump drives by saying that JD Byrider was too short after racing all year. We were poised for another world championship but we were taken out of the 2006 title. We won the 2007 championship in Keywest to prove the point.

That is it in a nutshell. If you want more detail my brother details things a little more on www.weismann.net

pat W

There is more on their website.

YEP,,,,,BIG DIFFRENTS !!

The only difference is in strength, performance & dependability when comparing a Weisman product to a Mercruiser product. Weisman is off the charts superior.

So after all of the input .If you had a chance to buy wet sumps instead of dry sumps for a project boat,would you do it.Does not seem like the HP loss is that great in a non race boat to worry about.Thanks JOHN

In a non race boat i would go with wet sump,,because of the maintenance ,,unless u would get them for the same price as wet sump's ?!

Still ,,,merc says every 50 hours ,,,pump maintenance !!

The numbers I have read over and over is 100HP to turn a wet and 30 HP to turn a dry.

The wets were full of oil and had a tank in the transom plate assembly.

The drys contain the oil in the bottom of the drive were the bottom gearset is and pressurizes nozzles to spray all the upper gears from a pump in the nose cone.

The first two pictures are from my Cigarette Tiger built in 1999, it had Drys but still had the old transom plates containing the tanks for a wet-sump. The last picture is a conventional modern transom plate with a Dry Sump.

Hope this helps..

I'd spend the extra $$ for the dry sump. Parts for the wet sumps are getting scarce.