Over 4 seasons on a XR upper and imco -2 lower with over 1000 hp on my 572 talldeck 10:71 blown bbc in my warlock. Drive is still on the boat with new owner.

With all due respect, Im a grown man and, although have not mastered the technique of "listening and hearing", I have gotten pretty damn good at it! The reason why I quoted that line is b/c I am trying to learn all the different options, hence the reason why I started the thread. I did not ask that question, PR did, and I wasnt sure if another option would be to change the lower to imco, etc w/o swappig out the entire drive. Obviously I am still new to outdrives and the such and do not have nearly as much knowledge as u on this subject, but I still dont see the need to respond in a condescending manner.

Thanks to all that responded so far!

Negative. The SCX drive is 13k new. That is each of course.

You are probably thinking of the Arnerson conversion, which is around $23k a side.

I put a whole 2.5 hrs on my XR before it broke. but i threw a bravo on there that has 200+ hours and it's lasted no problem Go figure!!!!

Did you have some problem with your SCX? Because that is the third time in this thread that you have said that you were worried it was going to break.

I have not heard of a single SCX upper gearset failure so far. it may have happened, but it has not been posted on here. There have been guys running well over 1000hp through them for many hours without failure. Your 700hp isnt going to hurt it much unless you like getting air and bouncing it off the limiter before reentry.

http://xpowerdrive.com/frame_index.html

These look great

The X Power drive is now being produced by Strut.

And for $30k a side!!! for just the outdrive, they should look great.

..and your nearest dealer/service center would be???

At the moment, I'd say the best overall alternative would be NXT's, followed by Konrad, and then Arneson. You simply cannot channel Top Fuel horsepower through Kia transmissions.

FYI... XR's have a problem with the upper drivshaft. Not the gears themself. THe upper drivehaft "sits" in the niddle bearing. This bearing was changed some time ago to "more" spindles and smaller"..thus makes a grove into the driveshaft. It starts to "wobble" (even miniscule amount) and poof.
Older Bravos had niddle bearing with larger "spindles" (I'm not sure on this) but I think Imco and others use hardened or "stronger" upper drivshafts, and going back to the "larger" size spindled niddle bearing. Mercs. XR's has a bit better upper driveshaft then the STD Bravos. I think they have "some" hardening, but the niddle bearing (or is it called pin gear?)... still digs into them.
The bad thing is that Merc. just won't admit it and comes up with all type of excuses for failures. Now..
I'm not saying this upper driveshaft is the case ALL the time... but waaaay too often.

Boy, they sure do! The drive looks decent, too.