outdrive showers =cavatation
 

I installed wicked marine outdrive showers on the boat,now I have a bad cavatation if I take off more then 1/4 throtle,I removed the outdrive showers and the cavatation is gone,reinstalled the outdrive showers and adjusted the tubes as high as I can on the cavatation plates ,it might of helped a little but still cavatating,is there any fix for this? or do I just remove the outdrive showers and live with the holes on my outdrives.
Do outdrive showers really do anything other then keep the top of the outdrive looking clean???

Experienced the same proble as you.....finally swithed to a clamshell type pick up from rex and it helped ....but was still there....Finally went to an Imco Extreme Sc upper and it is run off the intake for the water pick up ending the problem...so to answer you question it is up to you, but trust me you are not a lone in the problem and it really is a hit or miss thing on what people experience it and those who dont

Tex

These are the ones that I used, that didn't require drilling holes. The drives definitely don't have the white chalky build up on there upper half anymore, and I never noticed any change in speed or cavitation since they have been installed. It's possible this style might be less likely to cause cavitation because the pick up tubes are spread farther away from the prop.





http://www.driveshowers.com/

Rigging a forward facing pick up with the bottem blocked off, keeping it as close to the cavitation plate as possibe is best. Sometimes you can notch the pick up and fold the rear piece of metal forward to shield it from the prop. Ugly but it will work in a pinch.

If I am reading this right, it sounds like the drive shower tube flows in reverse at low speed, and turns into a ventilating tube causing cavitation. They use similar tubes, albeit smaller, on some surface drives to purposely cavitate them, so they engine can get its rpm up into the torque band.

I would be interested in hearing answer to the original poster's question, about what, if any, drive temperature drop people have measured.

Michael

I installed them on my Top Gun with Bravo drives . They do spin a little just getting up on plane but hook up once the boat gets going . Not a problem for me .

http://www.driveshowers.com/

There are test results on this site.
Just the fact there is no longer white chalky mineral deposits on your drive (from water boiling off) shows they drop temps. Cheap insurance. They won't make your drive stronger, but it may last longer.

I don't think it really proves it drops drive temps. Take the situation where you are boiling water on a stove. When you put the cold water in the pan, it's tap temperature. On the other side is a 1500 degree flame. If you keep changing the water, the temperature never gets very warm, yet the flame is still 1500 degrees. It all has to do with how much heat transfer there is from the inside to the outside of the pan or in this case the drive. The only true way to measure the performance of the shower is to measure the oil temperature itself (Livorsi has a guage for this).

As far as keeping the mineral deposits down, that seems like a nice benefit in itself.

Michael

I did a test on my boat with a drive oil temp. Ran the boat without, and then with the drive shower (simrex), no difference. Buy one to keep the drive clean, thats it !

Well that's discouraging.