I do not see any response back from bajamann, I am curious how it planes out, if he has to pour the coals to it or not to get going.

Are they the old style housings? If so the input shaft bearing pre-load nut will back off. They need to have the nut crimped and loc-tited or, preferably, hard shim the brg pre-load.

I really recommend talking to George at All American Drive Service. I just had their Stage II done on my drive. They have improved a number of major weaknesses in the current drive. My bearings gave out and caused a strain on my top shaft which broke causing some significant destruction. They have redesigned the bearings and shaft for greater strength and gave me a 2 year warranty for 650hp.

It probably isnt the drive so much as it is the stellings box. Can you insert a drive alignment tool smoothly before inserting the drive or do you have to loosen the bearing carrier bolts?
I shimmed my bearing carrier so once tight, the drive alignment tool slid in like butter. That eliminated some of the failures. Still dont know how to reduce harmonics, but I am open to suggestions. One thing I will swear by is the Max Machine Works Top Cap with 7/16 studs - I think that made one of the biggest differences in rigidity and allowed slightly higher torque on the top cap bolts.


Anybody else have something int he drive line to reduce harmonics?

I phase the U-joint yoke in the box with the U joint yoke on the input shaft...I saw that in the merc service manual for jackshaft units.

I also had my drive shafts balanced.

Does it help ??....I really can't say, but I haven't blown any sh!t up in a while

Yeah, I did all that years ago UPON YOUR REQUEST! LOL

It helps, but there is no getting around the fact that its steel to steel. I have researched carbon fiber shafts but the people who build them said its too short to offer any real benefit.

Merc make a set up that is not steel on steel with a small input shat to a bravo coupler then a drive shaft it works !!! I don't know how to post the pix of the parts off the merc web site if someone can do it I will be happy to talk to them over the phone 401-841-5866 bill

I sure would like to see that set up, as I also have my cat set up with XR's on shafts with no couplers and it is harder on the drives I believe, especially with 1.35 ratio spinning 35p 5 blades!

After driving a boat with regular XR's and jumping in a boat with XR behind Stellings you can hear it when you put it in gear. Even at low RPM it will have a metal to metal "ping" when you engage forward or reverse.

Not to mention what running high horsepower with a lopey cam through no wake zones. I am confident it hammers the gears to death.

Have you looked into a Drive Guardian for this application?