XR upper caps
 

I bought a set of xr upper units early last spring from a gentleman on this site. Have had no problems with them except mounting my drive showers on them. They have the finned tops so I had to use spacers & grade 8 bolts to mount them to work. Recently I read somewhere on here to use the studs because they add strenth to the case assy, is this true or should I be ok with what i've done? thanks Randy

Randy,
The studs are better, but if the bolts go all the way, or close, to the bottom it will fill the void. Using bolts will pull on the case and studs create a clamping force. You need all the help you can get with the XR gears and studs are a step better than bolts. Wheather or not it will be a deal breaker, well there are a lot of other weak points to an XR. I dont believe bolts will make or break a drive, but studs are better.
Just my .02.

I had to space my showers approx 2 inches up to clear the cooling fins & I was also in a time crunch to get the boat together so I could make desert storm with -2 inch sportmasters also I was fighting time to test. Ended up testing down there with a couple of bblades props. Ran ok but needs more hp. If I run around 600 hp each will they live or should I start swapping & shopping?

600hp should not be an issue as long as you treat them right.

Thanks Griff, have you been able to check out the river lately? The corps did a flyby about 6 min long from Decater to Omaha & it dont look good. Its on utube somewhere, you can see the rock dike at cottonwood but it looks like about 2/3 of the place where the bar & visitor docks is gone. Would be cool to surround the spot with slips & build a new bar there with some walk bridges to connect it but it would take someone with pockets to their ankles to afford it. Check it out & pm your # maybe get a bite to eat & bs a bit, Randy

What about the billet caps with the internal showers? Anyone use these? Anyone a dealer with a good price break?

I've seen them but the stuff I run through on the missouri river I would be afraid of plugging them up & not realizing it until the lower went boom

The river and marinas are FUBAR'd. Bellevue and Sandpiper are completely destroyed. The City of Omaha is trying to condemn all the property in Freedom Park, including the Anchor Inn and Sandpiper Marina so they can reclaim it. Anchor was already rebuilding and the city hit them with a court order to stop.

The city actually does own the land, but it is on a 99 year lease to Hazard Corp who sub leases to the Anchor and and Sandpiper.

the real answer is drive showers do not work.

A little birdy told me someone that has enough clout & money is trying to block that measure but I never heard a name so we'll wait & see i guess. Sandpiper definately needs cleaned up, either get all those cruisers off the blocks & in the water or make them go away.some of them are looking pretty shabby.

audacity, I would like to actually see if & how much water they actually pour on the drive. Changing direction of moving parts especially with a lot of hp does tend to build heat. Don't the bmax uppers have water jackets all around the upper gearset? I would think that would help more than spitting some water on the top needle bearing cap.

we did a LOT of testing with instrumented drives and data acquisition systems. cameras too! when driving at moderate speeds where the shower was providing water, the oil temps were very low anyway. hi speeds the shower had no water going to it. at 70 mph there was no water and the temps were ok...at 90 still no water with very hi oil temps! to have water flowing to drive at top speed actually slowed the top speed and the temps were not measurably cooler. we have even discharged engine water on top of the drive.

as a side note using a shower produced staining on the top of the drives and made it difficult to clean.

in the end the area where the pickup on the showers was removed for increased performance and the top plate with hole in was great for removing the drives! which i rebuilt drives EVERY TIME they were used, even if they only had 10 mins on them!

while i have yet to take temperatures on a BPM drive (Arneson) that has let than 2 qts in it and sees no water, spinning outrageous speeds with 2500hp going into it! the oil always looked good coming out.

I would take it then that with no pump in the drive the oil in the lower half stays cool because it is submerged & the oil in the top burns up because they can't really intermix with only 1 lube hole connecting them. I've never seen a #6 apart do they have some kind of pump assy to move fluid around? As far as cleaning goes I've almost given up because I have yet to find anything to cut through that baked on crap

goto home depot and get yourself some muriatic acid and mix it in with some water...stuff will fall off! it won't hurt ya but does burn like a biztch in cuts or a hangnail. lol

if ya wanna be nice to your drives...use a 6 blade rather than a 4. there is a significant reduction in vibration with adding blades.

change your oil often, not because it's bad but it will give you a chance to see whats coming out.

with every oil change your top and back caps should come off to have a look. even excessive wear can be fixed by flipping the gears and using the other side. much cheaper than blowing up a drive!

Been using muratic acid for years & the crap in the missouri still hangs on I have even soaked my props in the stuff & it is still a hassle to get everything clean. As far as gears go I read someone saying they just swap the drives side to side every year to swap the load on the gearset, plus don't you have to disassemble & reshim to flip the gears? I don't have all the special tools needed to set up a bravo, I do however agree that changing fluid often is cheap insurance to catch a problem before self distruction happens. What are your thoughts on the side to side swap idea?

no special tools are needed to pop those caps and take a look. and it's highly recommended...and an ideal way to fill the drive with oil.

i would not just swap drives without having evidence to support that decision. you could create more problems than you think you are doing good! ....but really if you see wear patterns on gears...what type is it...if the gear teeth are hammered then the chance of snapping it off running the backside is too great. some fretting, maybe ok, but the question is where is the material that came off and what else did it do?!....

people that know how much i've done with bravos always expect me to say that here are all these problems with the drive and here is what you have to do to fix it....truth is that almost always some small part would show VERY early signs of failing in a perfectly working drive. swap that part out and you're back in biz.

hey,,,drug boats are on discovery right now. lol

I'm watching the drug boat show right now. What I was understanding about swapping drives pertained to the load on thecase floor in one direction & loading the top cap in the other. As far as the thrust washers & needle bearings would that be the first place damage might happen that would be obvious? As far as the gears I broke a couple off another drive last year but caught the noise & shut down immediatly,disassembled upper & lower to clean & inspect for other damage,fortunately did'nt found filings or anything but am reluctant to just swap out another gearset without being able to check clearances & backlash,pinion depth those are the tools I don't have.I will not take my boat to any shop in the Omaha area because I used to deal with them with my own shop & they just want hang parts inflate prices & give you the once it leaves warranty void attitude.

u can always email me with question [email protected] . i'll b more than happy to tell ya what i know, if it can help ya out!

cheers mate

Best answer!

Can you tell us what brand of showers you tested and on what kind of boats and the X on each of the boats tested. Were these stock applications or not?
Is there a thread on this forum or somewhere else you can point me to it, I would like to see the videos at the different speeds.

for the most part many drive showers are the same. some use ridged SS tube and some flex tubing. the pickups i designed and fabricated. some of the top caps were just to hold a hose while others had side jets as well. we even had one set of top caps that held water on the top cap and the exit shot down the sides. i think those ended up installing on my AT poker run boat when i sold it.

x dimensions were from the min height required by F2 rules(aprox +2") to Super V where they were aprox -2".

no go on videos being online somewhere.

here's a great video just posted....kinda made me giggle thinking about people that thought nose cones were the holly grail of speed modifications! LOL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuDiYtGAp3U

Audacity, is it a good idea to switch to the finned caps? My XR upper has a flat cap and I do not run a shower.

looks like u have a 22 donzi with a 525?....which i have to say is my earliest childhood memory of the coolest thing i had ever seen!
o yeah, your question.... so i would not worry about it at all! use the money to change the oil more often.

I use finned caps and a shower, and depending on how high that drive rides in the water, there is no way that you can say that a shower does NO good. Each boat is going to set up a little bit different, If you aren't getting water at high speeds, you need to drop the shower water pickup.

Mine still over heated and fried the guts in the upper using a shower and finned caps. And you can tell it was a heat problem and not something wrong with the way it was set up.

Just my .02

I am going to switch to the billet caps with the internal cooling.

if you are burning oil in a drive, you have other serious problems!

Not sure, you could be right,

Buying a new one and putting on the good caps,

Re building the other one and the lowers.

Hopefully be in good shape for a couple seasons.

it's going to take oil temps of over 600 deg to effect ("fried") that oil.!!!
u running more than 525's?
what gears?
what props do u run?

Thirdchildhood & audacity concerning posts23-24 Tch you have a 22 ft Donzi which would be a single engine boat correct? If I remember right the rotation would try to force the forward gear through the floor of the case rather than blow the cap off. If I am correct there then a finned cap isn't going to make any difference, that is assuming that your xr drive has the thicker cap like my finned ones. Also do have studs holding the cap on, if so I think audacity is correct. Now Mr Audacity my question after a short story is what will cool these uppers down? Now the story part. As I was watching the drug boats & talking with you on here I watched a thread of a badazz cat running X drives which I guess are a surface drive with a camera showing the drive completely out of the water at 170mph what keeps these drives cool enough not to fry the oil? Brett at bblades told me that the pickups for drive showers should only stick down about a1/2 inch or so if I remember correctly but with the power some people are putting through these drives I can see the boat completely out of the water so what to do? The gentleman I bought these uppers from had the intercoolers from his blowers exiting directly on the drives & still blew one up.

Thanks for the feed-back on the finned cap. I thought it was just to dissipate heat better. I'll leave the flat one on. There was an interesting thread on Speedwake a while back where someone actually did some oil temp readings with and without a shower and there wasn't much, if any, difference. Also, there seems to be lots of water flying around back there so I doubt that the upper is high and dry at speed. I have also heard others state that they have lost speed with the shower. BTW, I change the oil every season which is about 40-50 hours.

I am no expert by no means. But I would have to agree. I have some experiance with all types of bravo drives. I have destroyed all types since 1988. I have discussed this with Merc and at some point you have to ask yourself, If the company that designed, developed, engineered,manufactures and torture tests them for more hrs than anyone can, if they do not think they need to install a drive shower then why do some people think it helps prolong the life of the drive. I forgot to mention that they have to warranty them also. Bottom line is if you over power past the design limits or drive the boat and leave the throttles down when the boat leaves and reenters the water they break! I have proved this to myself multiple times. :drink:

Thirdchildhood, I think it was Brett at bblades that told me about losing speed I think that is why he said they should only be 1/2 inch or so below the cav plate. In my response to you & audacity I mentioned a video of a surface drive on a cat, well Audacity posted the same vid on this thread & it is pretty cool & you can also see there is really no water around the upper drive at speed but that is also a surface drive & I am not familiar with them. If you happen to have a standard bravo upper cap laying around compare it to whats on your drive, the xr cap should be quite a bit thicker even without the fins. I run my boat pretty hard so I just started buying amsoil in 5 gal buckets cause it's cheaper than gearsets or drive housings.

Is the amsoil gear lube better?

Boater8987, You would think that would be the case but merc will look for any reason to deny a warranty claim. Remember back when cars were built to actually be fixable? Now they are built to the engineering gnats azz, just enough to run until something small goes wrong then you replace the entire assy (engine,trans,etc). Well boats are not too far from that cause they (factory,actual mfr, & shop) make boocoo bucks selling parts at approx 40% markup on a lot of stuff then they stick you with shipping costs if they can. Mercury & OMC used to make outboards that would theoretically last forever if maintained properly, I have worked on both brands older than I am (almost50) Keep the carbs clean, replace the points, replace waterpumps,etc & they will run forever but break a part & then your screwed cause merc just makes the parts obsolete so you cant get a new part or omc just raised the prices through the roof. The first evinrude vro engine I worked on the vro pump was about 50.00 in 1990 or so the last one I did 4 yrs ago the same pump was 450.00. I'll bet if you took a brand new boat with a mercruiser powertrain in it & they found that you did anything to it other than maybe exhaust they would charge you a diagnostic fee & then tell you your warranty is void because you modified the engine. Heck they can void a warranty for not using their oil & filters if they want

Feff1000man, I used to use off the shelf hi perf synthetic lube in all the boats I worked on with no problems but as I mentioned I run my boat pretty hard & when I replaced the drives this spring I talked to teague about a few other things but they recommended using amsoil, of course they sponsor Bob so you know how that goes but as a car tech way back when amsoil came to the shop with a friction machine & tested most popular oils & amsoil was the only one that would not stop the machine no matter how hard you pulled the friction arm. However at Desert storm I talked with the guy making the BMax drives & he claims theoil he sells will put amsoil to shame but you pay the price cause it was a lo more expensive. I'm thinking Audacity has a good point of changing the fluid often. There is a lot going on in a lower unit & that is a cheap way of inspecting, he also mentioned popping the top & back caps to visually inspect which I will probably start doing on mine cause orings are reuseable or cheap enough to replace if needed.

if you bust a tooth off on a gear, it's not going to matter what direction the drive is turning! those 3 gears will be forced away from each other! the top cap being the weakest link may pop....i have seen some massive efforts (easy to accomplish) to try and reinforce the top and rear caps so the top cap is no longer the weakest link...guess what; it blows the front nose off the drive case and i've seen it take out the entire gimbal assembly allowing sea water to rush in the boat!

most stock bravo applications have a massive amount of water flowing inside the aluminum drive case to cool the engine systems. which i end up reducing that amount of water in 1/2 by the way.

unless the drive is so hot that tolerances begin to decrease to the point of additional friction and or lack of oil then there is nothing to be gained in a gearbox by having the oil 305 degrees vs. 310 degrees. please let's not get into the thermal losses.

there is less oil in a arneson drive than a bravo, seeing no water, transferring 4000 hp! There is no water cooling a crash box gear set seeing the same power either and that has even less oil. whats cooling the rear end in a vehicle.

OIL: i've done a lot of testing on bravos. aside from that, i would rebuild them from top to bottom if there were even used for 10 mins to test a set of props. everything inside was documented in my books. cases, gears, and shafts i use letters to designate and track parts. lots of different oils used that people claim are the best! i have not seen anything to reflect their claims. merc hp gear oil is some good stuff and if water finds its way into it; it retains its lubricating properties quite well. I have not seen another differences using other snake oils out there. The only exception is Royal Purple. I can actually tell it has been used in a drive with my naked eye...When under the labs microscope, it's very evident the benefits of Royal Purple.

Royal purple was going to be my original choice but my local supplier could'nt get it to me in time for my DS run plus I already had some other stuff ordered from teague & they had a bucket in stock. Unfortunately some things in my area are tough to find locally when the stock car season is getting wound up. I'm glad they dont allow big blocks otherwise everyone that has a boat would also need a shotgun next to the door. It's almost as bad as people breaking into your house & stealing the copper tubing out of the walls. Machine shops stop everything to build small blocks for people that are stupid enough to spend a grand on a 300.00 claimer engine! Plus with all the horror stories out there about engine builders I would rather ship mine across the country to a reputable boat engine builder than let daryl & his other brother daryl take a whiz at it. Been there,done that, & have 2 509's still setting on stands.

Who makes the billet upper cap with the built in shower? Havn't been able to find the manufacturer so that I could research them a little more before I pulled the trigger on a pair.

Thanks,Jeff

Try Billet Marine @623-322-0864 Curtis Wood had a booth at DS just across from The Bravo Shop might check them too. 800-792-7286 Clinton Pfahl gave me a card they make the BMAX. Randy

if you are not pulling the plug on the drive every time you run??? then merc hp is the best for ya. not only a great oil but none work better if water gets in. after running any of my pleasure boats i would always pull the plug on the lowers, kick some pans under there and walk away till the next time. it would only take me 5 mins to fill the drives when i wanted to run the next weekend.

O...Tip # 54871....some aftermarket manufacturers of drive parts use their "stronger" studs and or bolts. the threads on a machined stud can differ drastically from a nut or a part threads intended for a rolled product. i've even had the manufacturer send me machined studs with nuts for rolled threads. not a good combination and have actually seen drive failures because of it!! just pay attention to the fit of the aftermarket fasteners!