That looks like a case of XR gear acne...nothing that a $ 1900 upper gear set, or if your lucky like Kurt a $ 750 lower gear set won't fix.....I've had a lot more uppers that lowers do this.

Interesting as my XR issues typically start with lower gear pitting/debris on lower magnet. My upper magnets seem to stay pretty clean. When I lose an upper, it's an immediate failure, caused by ripping a tooth out of the forward gear. In the 5 years I've owned my 30 Mystique T/S, it seems to eat 2 drives a season. This year, we lost one on Fourth of July and Labor Day and that's not the first time we've blown stuff up on major holidays! lol.

If you're running XR's, you need spares ready to go. We've got 4 drives and rotate them when the magnets start looking ugly..

Biggus....2 drives per season ?? Man you need to learn how to work those throttles

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Sell all of them and go Here^^^^^ problem solved! I was eating atleast 2 a year. If I got 20 hours out of my XRs I felt lucky.

But we believe it's my Imco lower that is going. The XR upper gears looked good with Brian's cool little camera probe.

When I saw this in mine, 4 hrs later the upper gears were toast and broke the tower in the upper, $2500 later I was good to go

Id take it apart now and save what is left

It's in my mechanic's hands now. He did inspect the upper gears and they look fine. We think the chunks are from the Imco lower. I hope to be back on the water by this week-end.

I'd pay the extra $$ to have him at least pull the upper gear set out and flush/inspect the bearings. The fluid from the lower does make its way into the upper. All it takes is a little bit of debris in the needle bearings to really make an expensive mess... I know first hand.. July 4th, I had a tower needle bearing get loose, get between the pinion and forward gear and all went to crap really quick...

I trust Brian to do what needs to be done. I filtered the old oil and not one bit of debris or glitter was in there so it looks like the small chunks were it and the magnet got them. I should talk to him today.

Carl I just saw an old post on the "Microboats thread" where your speed was 85.80 MPH. Was this before you did the LU welding
and shaping? Was there a gain after the modifications or did the work just stop the "burning".