composite outdrives
 

Why has no one made a carbon or kevlar out drive yet ? It would be lighter stronger and it could be repaired in the water with underwater epoxy. It seems like alot of a boats weight is in the drives people pay alot of money (for me any way) for 6s and all these other high performance drives. Why wouldn't the pay for the wow factor and weight savings ?

I would guess that it'd be difficult to keep the frontal area as small as with aluminum. Also probably difficult to keep all the mechanical bits consistently in the precise alignment necessary for them to work and hold up.

Volvo Penta Ocean Series Composite Outdrives. Fail.

U sure its a complete composite drive Volvo makes ? I,ve seen one ,that looked like it has a composite coat/shell that was covering the Aluminum .
Not sure which type Volvo anymore

As post 3 said Volvo Penta had one but not anymore. it was more inline what poster # 4 is mentioning. It was not 100% composite. Volvo did have problems with it plus some of those problems were related to the transom assembly and parts in that area.

Volvo SX and the DP currently are very good outdrives. They changed in 2007 the shape of them and picked up 1.5 to 2 mph over the 2006 and back versions on the same boat testing.

I know Volvo is a good engine/outdrive company. My issue against them is the availability of service/parts. There are a number of "grays" in our area and they work pretty good. However, when anything happens the wait for service is long - and in some cases most of the "short" Indiana/Michigan season. That's the only reason why I stayed with a Mercruiser. We all know they have issues but it seems that everyone works on them and parts are all over the place.

Just my thoughts

Safe Boating

3pointstar

Correct. It was a composite shell over an aluminum structure. If you cannot get a decorative cover to stay together...

If you gut an outdrive and put the casings on one side of the bench and all the 'internal workings' on the other side you'd find that the bulk of the weight really comes from the internals . Not the shell .

Or do away with it all together and use Arneson. Then you dont have a drive or the weight.