I'm looking to swap my standard XR lowers for either Imco or XR Sportmaster units. I have a 2004 35' Fountain Lightning. The current setup has the prop centerlines about 5.5 inches below the running surface. The boat doesn't even throw a rooster even with the drives up to 5 on the indicators. I'm wondering if there is anyone who has experience setting up these boats and where the drives need to be for the best performance. Any help would be appreciated........

So what does a rooster tail have to do with performance? Are you able to get your engine max rpm with your current props? What are your slip numbers? HP of your engines etc. Surface drives produce a tail. If your trying to trim your drives to make a tail, your going to destroy a drive, u joint or somethink and not get any more speed, worse probly.

Don’t get me wrong...... I’m not trying to throw a tail, it’s just an observation in comparison with another 35 Fountain I was on as well as several other newer V Bottoms we’ve run with. The other Fountain threw a short 2 foot tail even with the drives all the way down while coming on plane. Then about a 4 foot tail at full speed. With the same 525s he was about 8 mph faster. So..... considering the tail/prop wash, I’m thinking that the X-Dimension is more aggressive. I was reaching 5300 rpm with 32p 4 blade bravo’s and seeing about 18% slip. The 525s are being upgraded to around 775-800 so I also plan to change props and drive ratios. Just trying to get a good starting point for the drive heights.

If you plan on upping your HP to 775 then you might as well toss those uppers in the trash. Their never gonna hold up to that power pushin that big of a boat. Your slip sounds OK so there must be some other difference in the boats your comparing to. Weight is my guess.

I'm looking at the Teague Platinum drives which they're claiming can easily handle 900hp and the Imco SC drives. But I'm not sure what the Imco is rated at.