Wilson Lowers
 

Has anyone seen how they finish the lowers to make them have the brushed look? Flapper wheel?

I used a rubber block with 80 grit to give it the brushed look. Then folded a 2" X 2" piece over the leading edge to give it the vertical brush.

Palm sander with 320 grit comes out nice.

The drives are hand finished. We have come to love a particular brand of paper and grit that works perfect and keeps the finsih longer. There is a purpose for the way we finish it also.
It also takes time. We spend anywhere from 6-8 hrs (on a #6, each) just finishing them.
We have been doing this for 25+ yrs.
The results are amazing. We do every type of drive. At the moment we have, #8's, #6's old and new, Imco SC and SCX, Sportsmaster outboard and inboard, and blackhawk, all in the shop as we speak.
The season is starting. For those of you that NEED ( want ) more speed, better handling and sexy looking drives. Give me a call 772-285-3562
Our real expertise, however , is in propellers. Just recently we modified a set of standard Hering props, and picked up almost 4 mph.
We work on every types!! Last month we reworked a pair of 36" diameter bronze propellers for an 80' luxury yacht. The boat wouldnt plane full of fuel, and took over 2 minutes when half full.
WCM came to the rescue. The boat planes in 20 seconds full of fuel, and picked up over 3 knots at WOT.
So get your gear to us whatever boat you have!!!

Craig

why not cnc the lowers.It would reducing man hours,accurate, and cost effective.

we have been down that path and it failed miserably. Most of the castings from the manufacturer are so bad, and with that I mean, not simmetrical, bent and overall out of shape that it makes it almost impossible to cnc them. Like I said, we have been doing this for 25+ yrs. We have been down every road, we have tested every shape, every tool, every thickness and we continue to test new ways to make it better. We will never, however, cut corners to save time and money and risk not putting out our best work everytime. As you all know, it takes no time to ruin a reputation that has taken years to build.
Happy easter everyone!

Craig.

I didnt know you guys did props? You did our SCX lowers for Lil R @ FPM. Engines are finishing up and should be able to get it wet in May. I sent you a text about the pic Wyatt posted of the finished lowers on my Thread in the Fountain Section....they look sick. Anyways, you guys were awesome to work with and we may be sending our Herings to you this fall.

Eric

What is the most and least speed gain seen finishing SC lowers?

Thanks

Will you put a link to the pics of the SCX lowers that Wilson did.. I cant find it. And it is way late for a school nite. :)

I used a very course flexible body file to remove all the ripples and thin the skegs then finished of with 360 wet and dry lubricated with paraffin

Peter

That came out very nice!! How much time into it?

the brackish water here dulls alum quickly, if you were to do my lowers and then i had them polished. Would it lose everything you did to it, or just a small amount from the polishing?

Looks Great.

Thanks guys, It took around 30 hrs to finish both drives that included making templates so that i could match both sides and one drive to the other as they are being used as a pair.

Peter

When I was in Key West this past year everyone I talked to about WCM said pretty much the same thing, they have a way of making your lower units way more efficient both in handling and speed. That's why I had them do my Scx-4's. They look awesome can't wait to try them.

Drives
 

Your lowers turned out really nice. Did you happen to check the width before and after. I would think you could remove an 1/8th of an inch off of the cases, going by the shavings in the picture.

Thanks J.P. i didn't take any measurements i just picked the worst drive with the deepest angle grinder gouges in it profiled this until i was satisfied with the shape which meant dropping the whole casting face to that of the deepest gouge, then made my templates so that i could match the profile to the others. The transition between the gear case & skeg required a hell of a lot of profiling but i am sure it will be well worth it.


Peter

The finish we provide lasts longer than most. We havent found that buffing them helps them look better for that much longer and it is a lot easier to get our finish back to almost 100% than it is to rebuff them.

Peter, the drives look nice. However, if the last photo is the finished product I can already see that you havent done much , if any, of the performance enhancing work on them. We do an awful lot of reshaping, and know specific areas where we have to take out and modify. Be very carefull with the Ilmors as they are already a thin casting and they have various oil cooling channels going through them, that already have thin walls.

KW.... I thank you for the kind words. We are also curious to see how they work.

On the Imco drives the results vary so much as they are on so many different boats and different horespowers. We have had as little as 1-2 mph gain and all the way upto 10-12 mph. But on almost most the cases the feedback has been how mucher better the boat planed, cruised, and handled across the board.

As you can see and read, from my fellow brit Peter unwin, it takes a very long time to get them to just look better, then add on to that all the reshaping and modifying we do to them, its not just a "take a grinder to it" job. We have been doing this a very long time. The best of the best use us daily. We pride ourselves on the work we do and put out everyday.

All the best

Craig

Hi Craig,
The drives weren't finished in the last photographs been busy on other projects. This week i spun up a plastic bush to slide over the propshaft as a guide to reshaping the rear of the housing taking care not to go too close to the circlip recess, ideally i would like to take more material away in this area but i would need to strip the drives and check the wall thicknesses first, i will probably do this at their first tear down and inspection. We will be visiting Florida in October staying for around 7 weeks. My fly-by-wire steering system will be running by then so i will be looking for potential customers, would be nice to call by and say hi, say hello to Mark for us.

Peter

explain what and how you did the profile proccess with,,,great job

SCX Lower
 

Have you had good success in redoing the new IMCO SCX lowers ?

i tried to work mine with sand paper and lots of love thinking i could do "blue printing" and ran hard 3-4 times with zero results... i finally sent my imco lowers to craig at wilson custom and he literally made love to these things, gained me 3 mph without pushing the boat, made my boat handle 10x better, and says if i send him the props there is more to come............ my drives look nothing like stock imcos anymore..... WCM are lower genuises, worth every penny

SCX Lowers
 

Anyone have a single engine boat with the SCX lower that has had Wilson blue print their lower?

Hi TWIN-SPINS,
My preferred weapon of choice for roughing out is a bosch electric dye grinder with a coarse aluminium burr, the finer detail work is done with a small air dye grinder with smoother burrs. The straight lines are achieved with a course body file followed by a second cut half round file, i then use a rubbing block for the outer radiuses and then a broom stale wrapped in production paper for the internal corners finished of with scotch brite. All of the above processes require good hand eye co-ordination as Craig has pointed out Wilson Custom Marine has been doing this for many years and have great crudentials in this area. I like to make and modify as many components for my own boats as possible and i don't mind too much if it doesn't work out first time i can always weld them up and try a new shape, not something i would reccomend unless you have the time and facilities.

Peter

This thread is very interesting & look forward to more posts....... especially the pics!!!
Sound to me like WCM knows what they're doing.
Would love to see them post a few pics of the drives they are working on?

Thanks, Tim Bostic
Hoss Marine Props

p.s. Thanks Peter for sharing your stuff.

peterunwin...im curious about the rounded trailing edges. I thought those were meant to be squared off and sharp? Like a planing hull vs displacement hull. It was my impression that at speed there would be an air void on the trailing edge.

Hi JRider,
The thinking behind re-shaping the rear of the lower units is to try and reduce the turbulent waterflow to the props ideally i would like to do this over a much longer distance to make it a much more gradual transition but i would need to strip the drives and check wall thicknesses before removing any more material. I have had excellent results re-shaping the Volvo DPR lowers on our diesel boat which used to suffer quite bad propeller erosion. To me modyfing and testing new ideas is a really fun part of boating sometimes it works:) sometimes it doesn't:(

All the best
Peter

anyone have a picture of an imco sc lower redone by wilson? results?

The first two are of a Wilson Imco. The second two pics are of the work I did on mine. I've tweaked my water inlet just a bit since. I'm poor this summer or I'd have sent it to Wilson.

http://i763.photobucket.com/albums/x...blueprint2.jpg
http://i763.photobucket.com/albums/x...oblueprint.jpg
http://i763.photobucket.com/albums/x...s797Medium.jpg
http://i763.photobucket.com/albums/x...s796Medium.jpg

did you pick up any speed?

It's hard to tell yet but I think I gained about 1 mph. I also am hoping that I stopped the cavitation damage by moving the water inlet forward. 3/4 inch of the rear of the inlet was welded up. That was my main concern.

Great Family to deal with
 

I cannot say enough good things about the Wilson's, Craig and Mark are top notch and delivered exactly what they promised. They return your calls, keep you up on productivity and provide practical advice on combinations. On our 07 triple 525 43 ZR we picked up 3-4 mph.The finish and improved planning is an added bonus. Looking at a new project and they will be definetly part of the plan.

what is the cost to have wilsons to rework the bravo one lower ?

I think around $2000-2500 per lower.

Here's their price from the website. I don't see Bravo 1's
discussed anywhere but I would hope they do service them.

DRIVES:

MERCURY M8 $5,750 for pair

MERCURY SSMIV $5,000 for pair

ILMOR INDY $5,000 for pair

MERCURY NXT $4,800 for pair

SPORTSMASTER $4,000 for pair

IMCO $ 4,000 for pair


WILSON CUSTOM MARINE

TEL: (772) 287-8755

FAX: (772) 287-8752

Email: [email protected]

Web: www.wilsoncustommarine.com