I think Offshorexcursion has it pretty much dead on with the monopoly. Lots of brands simply refuses to put anything than Merc or Volvo drives on their boats.

Also. The majority of the 20-40 foot pleasure boats run Merc 350-496HO's (now 8.2HO's). For those folks, the Arneson isn't that important, in terms of reliability at least. It would still be a good choise in terms of efficiency.

When building a hi-po cat or vee with twin 1200's or so, then have to choose a drive, Offshorexcursion has a vaild point again with the packages. That is the logical and "easy" choise. But if you choose to run Sterling, TCM, YPM ect. I highly doubt that an ASD #8 or #10 is a more expensive way to go. And when setting up. There are prop testing progams for those running surface drives. Would a set of ASD #6 or #7's put together with a pair of bobtail 496's, 8,2's or even 525's on a formula 353 or the like, be that more of a price deal, compared to a B1? Not to mention all the 28-40 foot cruisers running B3 props. They aren't exactly cheap either, and corrode like hell.

Another thing is. And this is only something I've heard, and got no personal experience with. But the word is, that the Arneson's and BPM style drives are even more efficient than the #6 and M8, and they are also stronger and more durable. Maybe someone has some info on this.

The last thing is. People like what they know. When the Alpha, Bravo, SX, DPX ect. is the "standard", that is what a lot of people want, simply because they know what it is. I've spoken to plenty of pleasure boaters over the years, that don't know what a surface drive is. Even some who did not belive that you could run a surfacing prop. So there is also some education to this. In a lot of people's eyes, a boat outfitted with Arneson's is of less value, because it "scares" them, so to speak.

I think your dead on Razor. With my hull it was not going to be bolt on. I was going to have to glass in the notches in the transom. I could not overcome the possibility that I would not be possible to reverse. For me if there was another similar hull with the drives, that would have made a difference. I think for Arneson to sell more units they are going to have to educate. I would make a deliberate effort to get my
drives on a wide variety of boats even if I had to give some
away. It would be the best marketing they could
do.

That's cool that you made your drives surfacing. If you get me a deal as good as you got I would do the same! The speed racer prob had a rudder. So that's why they changed it just my guess I have not looked into it.

B/C it was setup with a Rudder and the rudder boats are terrible at steering when going slow or docking which is one's first and last impression of the boating day.

I'm getting my pricing together and now I'm looking at props. The top of the list are a set of Hering 17x31 5 blades. Any other comments or suggestions? Best place to buy?

Bblades demo program. It gets expensive trying props buying them.

I decided to go with Arneson drives.

Although I sold my 382....I REALLY want to hear how this turns out!!!!!

Badazz:coolcowboy:

Are you still going to up the power, or will you see how things work with the current power and drives alone?

Start a thread when you start building. Should be an interesting and popular one for sure.

Good luck with it.

I'm going to start with the drives. Last year intercoolers were installed and I had the upper half of the engines inspected. Everything still looked good. So I decided to hold off a few years on the rebuilds.