Thank you all for the information. I currently am in talks to purchase a 42 Lightning with staggered 900s and #6's.

If it doesnt go through, I will be looking to have the ASD put on the back of the boat. I absolutely love the boat, it has fresh 850's that I will de-tune to 700 hp. Then I will sell my current brand new Bravo XR's that I have on the boat.

I saw the first teeth snap off in early 2008. Prior to that, I was confident they could hold some serious power. A light boat (Baja H2X) and 1170hp, driven with no respect, upper and lower gears would start to go away in 60-70hrs, but they never broke off a tooth. Every weekend he would make 100mph passes all day long.. The gears would pit, but not break.
After that summer all bets were off with XR upper gears. I dont believe anything has changed since then. That has been my experience. I dont think Merc can get back the guys that made the gears back in the day.
So larger gears are better at handling power. I believe the #6 has two lower shafts that share the power. But I have not been in one.

Dick

Thanks for the update, especially because this thread is really about you and your boat!

The 42 is well known as the best hull fountain makes. Sporty, and fast. Even though I am not a fan I have respect for it. You will eventually want a larger boat anyways so I agree that upgrading boats instead of wasting money on your current boat is the best decision. Also love the Arneson upgrade, best bang for the buck hand down.

Good luck with the purchase!

#6 gear set is much smaller then the all mighty B MAX gear and weaker because it is not dipped in Icy Hot vanishing gel! LOL! Plus that Torco crap is no match for the magic man, NEO oil which sooths and protects those properly shimmed gears by one and only JOHN P, AKA waconda AKA "the master of disaster"!

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With my own personal boat, a over-powered 2000 Baja 272, I tried a Imco shorty and a Stellings box, they both screwed the boat up so bad it went slower and LOST handling so to change to a Arneson asd-7 for me personally would be like re-inventing the wheel. As far as for twin engine boats and singles that it has been proven on, I think it would be a GREAT upgrade, Smitty

Some bad blood there???

There has got to be some truth to the early upper XR gears being better, I have had the same gears in my upper for 300 plus hours and 7+ years. I have had a 700 hp blown 502, 750 hp blown 540, 950 hp blown 540 and currently 1050-1100 hp blown 540 in my boat and I am STILL using the original upper case that came new on my boat in 2000 that Max worx put a full length tower in and the same xr gears for 7 years. Back when I first upgraded my drive in 02 or 03 I had a xr pinion gear that started to scallop by 50 hours and I broke the floor out of a xr gear that Max worx had bored out for a different bearing. Now as far as lowers, that is a different story, I have sheared off vert and prop shafts and ate up countless lower gears

Here I thought you knew what you were talking about with the larger #6 gears and I wanted to know how much bigger they were over the XR set. Has nothing to do with Bmax uppers or Neo oil. As you just pointed out you are just a keyboard boater with no clue what you are talking about, so keep posting away cause you do make all of us laugh with every post.

Indeed it has. Here ya go. No wonder it's so heavy!

Rik. Do you have any cutaways like this of the ASD#7M, #8 or #10?