Tom A.

It all comes down to price and amount of mods you want to do.
If money was no object, I am a big fan of the Arnesons but the new Indy drive is very intriguing.
I just did my drive upgrade last winter and when it came down to reliability vs. cost, for me the best way to go was the IMCO SCX. I had a perfect season last year and am very happy with my choice. Below is a quick synopsis of my research.

Based on Price:
The easiest and cheapest would be a set of IMCO SCX, B-Max, or Konrad. I went with the SCX for my boat. (twin 700hp)
($25-30,000 complete new)

Arnesons, Indys or #6s. will be bulletproof but will be substantially more expensive to complete and will involve some sort of modification, engine move, transmissions, etc.
($50-70,000 complete new)

no limits

What about Max Worx drives...not the new $$$ ones, but the drive they made before that. Do they still make them and how are they compared to imco (the black one not the silver drive.)

A.O. Razor

How do you figure a set of Konrads or SCX for 25k when one konrad costs around 19k on sale w/o steering and the SCX without box, steering or anything else than the drive itsef costs around 13k? The ASD is below 30k and takes no more work than the Indy, in fact, most likely less. No motor reconfiguraton. You'll need reglass the transom and raise the x to get any kind of deicent number from the SCX or Konrads and then you start to throw bravo prop blades. The boat in question will run faster and better with the surface drives. Still remember how little gain those 800 hp will yield with SCX or Konrads. 5-6 mph so 97-98 at best. The ASD #7Ms will put it in the mid 100s and run better. Why does everybody always assume that the ASDs are so much more expensive than Konrads or SCXs? They cost less than half of a six and weighs less than half to boot. What is the complete price of an SCX with gimbal and box? 12+k for dirve 8+ k for box and rams and the steering and is sooo much slower. The Bmax and Max works won't live, it's not much better than the Teague.

4195

There are so many different opinions on this. I miss my 22 small block alpha drive Checkmate I called on the ASD7's $42,000 plus install so it is close to a $50,000 upgrade. In doing any upgrades to my boats I always think about resale. The ASD's will appeal to some but turn others off. This is also true on the boat currently sitting with XR's. The boat has made it 400 hours with 3 drives. The ASD's sound interesting but definately not the way I will go simply because I will never get my money back. I never half a$$ my projects hence the reason my motors are at Zul's. But I may have to upgrade my internals in the current drives and run less boost and bring the power to 750hp. All out speed and topend are not my ultimate goal either, I am looking for reliablity and the fun factor. The boat was a blast last year so I am hoping for a bigger smile this year. I just want to know it is done right. Thanks for all your insight! I have a few upgrades this year that are being done beside the motors and my budget is hitting a wall and I can not drop another $25k-$50k this year, maybe next year though

Panther

I disagree. I priced out the options before purchasing my BMax's and the ASD's were much more expensive, especially when you include the cost of SSM props. I spent less than $20K on the total BMax swap in 2006 and sold my old IMCO's for $10K. My engines needed to be raised to accomodate the ASD's because of the X dimension I had. You can also order a BMax or SCX with different drive heights and spacers. I've been running my BMax's behind 800+hp for 300 hours, which is 280 hours longer than the IMCO Extreme SC's I had previously. BMax is the cheapest and easiest swap of them all. No helmet change, no steering change etc, just the cost of the drive and some bolts.

Perlmudder

you can get some money back selling 2 complete sets of xr's, steering, gimbles, etc to somewhat compensate for the price of arneson's. expensive either way it goes

575cat

Probably less than .50 cents on the dollar now days .

articfriends

iTrader: (1)

The Teauges you originally asked about are about the WORST upgraded Bravo upper with very little done over a stock xr, if your going to spend some serious money buy the b-maxes or imco scx's and std lowers or buy the scx lower too and crank the hp up. Konrad came on here hot and heavy a few years back, claims were made that they were pretty indestructible, a few had gear failures in big hp applications and nowadays they are pretty adamant about the 800 hp limit . If you had BIG BIG money to spend, impress us all by getting some x-power drives,Indy's or Arnesons. Whatever you do, stay away from the drives that use Bravo upper gears, you have medium hp with a pretty heavy boat, you will be forever fixing drives, Smitty

Smarty

I like those X-Power drives, what is the price difference between the X-Power Drive(s) and the B-Max, and or IMCO drive rated for his 850-900 hp application in the Cigarette?

A.O. Razor

I believe the X-power is 35k a side and then you need a HD transom assy. An Indy is about 36 retail, so possibly low 30s. Even though the X-power is 5" shorter than a B1, a box with 3" lift would be a nice thing, especially on v bottoms if one wants good adjustability and the ability to run it as a true surface drive. Stock x-dim would have to be a minimum of 17" just to put it even with the bottom and an x of 19-20 will certainly give it a good range of prop shaft heights, many boats does not have that kind of x when they are born as Bravo boats.