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amsoil + lucas in my XR

after a few weeks of back and forth konrad and myself have come up with a amicable resolution to the problem, im glad that we were able to work something out and they stepped up to the plate with some help, i believe they are good drives, whatever the root cause will be resolved with the help of kurt and myself...thanks for every ones input

I would be interested to know what broke on yours as well. Hopefully you haven't been sworn to secrecy as a condition of your "deal" with Konrad. I have a 37 Outerlimits Stiletto that has a set of Konrad ACE's on it behind 700 n/a 572's. The previous owner paid a lot of money to put them on because he was tired of breaking Bravo's (what the boat originally came with). He had multiple Konrad failures as well during the time he owned the boat. In Konrad's defense, he also modified the lowers with custom made nosecones, which were WELDED on- which to my knowledge is a no-no on cast aluminum cases. Shortly after I bought the boat (the drives were recently rebuilt by Konrad- less than 10 hours of run time, but out of the 1 year warranty), the vertical shaft let go. In the process the splines of the input shaft twisted and locked the drive into the trans (big pain to get out). Konrad's belief was that the welding distorted the case and caused a bearing failure, taking out the vertical shaft. Since then, I have paid to have new stock HP lower cases put on the drives and obviously had both gone through. I only have about 10 hours on them now, and both seem to be functioning well. I am going to change out the Royal Purple once I'm done breaking them in for the NEO oil that I ran in my last set of built bravos. Konrad has admitted that they had some quality issues with the gears they were being supplied earlier on, but have recently began manufacturing gears in-house. My drives have these new gears, so I will be interested in how they hold up. I can say though, that for what these cost to buy and then rebuild (especially at full retail costs) I doubt I will put any more money into them. I'd rather pay my local mechanic to build up a set of XR's and then repair them at a fraction of the cost when they pop vs. shipping these back and forth to WI every time they fail. I truly hope I get the "Magical" 300-400 hours that I hear about from certain high performance owners- but I am proceeding with caution. Again- not badmouthing Konrad in any way, as they did help me out to an extent, but I just feel like there isn't a lot of reliable information out there for buyers, and considering the cost of these drives, people deserve to hear first-hand experiences before they invest their hard-earned money.

I know that people weld nose cones on Bravos all the time without problems and the cases on them are no where near as beefy as the Konrads so I really can't be convinced that the case gets so distorted that it would cause the bearings to fail, that so sounds like another lame excuse , hope the new gears they gave you are better and they stay together, Smitty

That makes two of us!!! In Konrad's defense though... whoever welded these must've done it with his eyes closed. When a piece of the body filler fell off the lower and I went to repair it, the booger-welds I saw under it looked pretty shabby. With that much bulk weld on there, they easily could've warped the case. Either way- things look good now- just keep my fingers crossed and get that RP out of there soon.

Just up at Tahoe with our Fountain. Over 400 hrs on mine and still no sign of trouble with the exception of the afor mentioned u joint failure. I should point out that I service these drives religiously and I have been inside the both for inspections at about 300 hrs. I plan on tearing them down again this winter and checking the gear sets and will more than likely replace the bearings then regardless of what I find. Why are you guys sending your drives in? Any good ( operable word is "good") drive shop should have no problem goi g through your drives. There's nothing too special inside that a good shop can't handle.

Don't add the Lucas to your Amsoil, it brings down the film strength. Amsoil has tested this combination and they have found it will reduce the load capacity of the oil film. I used to do the same thing on my differentials, after seeing the test reports, I don't mess with perfection. Check the publications section of the Amsoil site they have plenty of test data.

Max machine worx has tested every kinda fancy oil that had came along, swepco, etc and that mix was there reccomendation, my gear life pretty much doubled with the lucas/amsoil combo so I have used it with alot of success, wasted 10,000$ on parts and testing different processes/heat treating etc in Bravo drives with Royal purple thinking it was a decent oil , Smitty

Royal purple is garbage, destroyed the transmission in my bmw running their synchromesh. When i drained it it was like piss, thinner than ATF

I thought this thread was about Konrads, there are plenty of drive oil threads.

Good point, are we going to get to hear what keeps blowing up in this guys Konrads??

the lower units is what keeps failing, just got them back on the boat today and went for a nice test run, gona try a few different props and change out that rp with the amsoil you guys keep talkn about, seems like u have plenty of drive experience articfriends!!! thanks again for all the info!!!

sounds like he was just trying to help a lost cause. you still selling konrads?

So I read (from orig. owner) 740 ft lbs torque on drives rated for 738??
2 ft lbs shouldn't do it but.........., how is boat being throttled on re-entry? How much juice when coming on plane? How often are the throttles pinned at or close to torque peaks?? 740 ft lbs is a pile of torque and is normally what breaks drives, not the HP's.
Hate seeing theese guys going through this much jing but seems to me, any time you're that close to being on the edge......,you'd expect home work needing to be done.
I'm guessing I could take the exact same set up (w/738 ft lb's so we're within mfg's specs) and one tank of fuel, and just w/driving, bring both drives back to the dock in boxes.
It would also kill me to own something like that and know I have to baby it to keep it alive.

Just sayin.......