Outdrive Recommendation
 

Looking for some advise on a outdrive. I have een helping a close friend shop for a houseboat, he found a extremely clean 1989, 40 foot Holiday Mansion with Volvo drives. It’s a 1989 and has the Volvo-Penta 280 dual prop drive.

I do not know much about their older drives so I was hoping to get some feed back. All that I can remember is that when the were in bed with OMC using their drives every outdrive they ran was a ticking time bomb.

Is that the same case with the Volvo 280 drive or are the dependable, if cared for of course?

I have one on a 23 foot boat and it's been great comes up on plane like a jet drive no problems in th 3 years i've had it seems pretty much bullet proof . Props are very expensive and not alot of the volvo penta dealers work on them so you'll have to look around in your area to see if any of them do(they require special tools to disassemble)

I just saw you live in Cicero Pirates Cove Marina has the tools to work on them

Anything else guys ?

A friend of mine has the 290 DP on his 88 PP. He's never had any trouble with it. He has put a couple hundred hours on it.

i owned one for 19 years never had any trouble with it. It was a 1989 dp 290 behind a 350 volvo in a 25 ft Bayliner had over 500 hours on it when i sold it.

Just an idea, if you do have problems, we had a 50' house boat back 8 years ago. Long story short the engine compartment sunk, not the boat (amazing) it was beached and water level dropped at lake just before the water sunk the whole boat. So instead of replacing it all, we removed the drives , welded up the holes and welded brackets with twin outboards. It worked great but we did loose some performance, but hey who goes anywhere fast on a 50' house boat.:lolhit: