Drive swapping for even wear
 

Anyone swap drives from side to side to promote even wear on the gears?

i thought about it when I first got my boat but decided against it - I figured once the gears were "set" that I'd just let them continue that wear pattern as opposed to creating new wear patterns every season.

Pluss I was going to have to change around the top caps/etc for the tie bar and ext. steering.

I agree that swapping drives, or just the lowers, would help the gears last longer. This is in addition to running good fluid and changing it often. The best way would be to wait to swap till the fluid shows small flakes, swap, run about the same amount of hours or untill flakes, then rebuild before they explode!

Mr. Gadgets advised me to do this when I had my drives he had done. Never any problems.

just swap the whole drive out,, side to side,,,since one drive is using the upper gear and the other drive using the lower gear,, in the drive shaft housing,,going forward,,,you would get even wear on each side of the upper gear set,,

When you switch your drives you are running on the opposite side of the teeth in the lower and in the upper it now would use the reverse gear for forward, so you could double your drive life. The problem with waiting till there are metal fines on your magnets is all that same metal has gone through you entire drive, bearing and gears. There is no good rule of thumb as far as hours on a drive to switch them because it of the different way folks use their boats and maintain them. I have customers with 500 hrs on a drive with no problems and some with 100-150hrs and there shot. So to answer your question yes a lot of people swap their drives and get more life from them.

Swapping gears is never good. You are reversing the loads on the gear teeth. Thus causing reverse stress. This will result in much sooner failure of the gears, than if you just left them alone. Also you never want to change the gear pattern. There is no gear sets that I cannot get at least 200 hours on, under normal running. I've been setting gears in drives for over 40 years now. I've had tremendious success with every type of gear. From #6's all the way down, to include Bravo's and Alpha's. I've worked in gearing all my life.

I agree 100% I have a freind who blew the gears out almost the first time out after reversing his drives on his bravo with blower motors. Even the shafts can let go when you unwind them, so to speak.

Sorta makes sense but does that mean we can't run our boats in reverse any more since we might put opposite stress on the gears??! J/K

People better get 200 hours under normal conditions with any gears!! I have 1700hrs in 70,000 miles on my dodge towing 25000+lbs 99% of the time (way more then normal conditions) and the gears are fine. My dads 1977 checkmate 351 ford I/O has at least 3000 hours of water skiing with original gears.

My guess would be how to make a overpowered and over driven drive last longer? Not a stock bayliner taking the family tubing.

The best statement about drives ever "different folks use their boats and maintain them". Yes every situation is so different its almost pointless to talk about it.

If someone was going to swap drives it would make the most sense to ME to only do it once. So somehow if you could figure out the longest way to run on one side so you only have to swap out once. I change my drive fluid every 20 hours or sooner and can tell when theres more metal, I am not talking chunks, just tiny tiny slivers, compared to just metal dust. Obviously taking them apart and looking would be the best but to much work for most and once apart might as well just rebuild!