Converting another boater into an Arneson Believer
 

Avid boaters, Jeff and Ron Tibbe, have been through the usual cycle of high performance boating. Buy a boat, upgrade it with more horsepower, ultimately realizing reliability is the first causality. In effort to address reliability, spending more money is usually the only right answer.

Jeff and his wife Meg, partnering with parents, Ron and Sherri Tibbe, own a 1997 32’ Active Thunder Offshore V-bottom boat – bought completely stock from Florida. In today’s world some might consider it old school with its classic lines and non-stepped bottom but the Tibbe’s chose this boat for its build quality and predictability in all offshore conditions - and with Jeff and Ron’s attention to detail the quality shows throughout. “My dad and I are both engineers that like to get our hands dirty, so the Active Thunder was a great platform to start from. With boat projects, we’re a little bit sick in that we like wrenching in the offseason as much as enjoying them in the summer.”

Just after buying the saltwater boat, in summer of 2006, Tibbe tuned up the original power package, then removed the engines, drives, steering, along with the rest of the mechanical and electrical and sold it during the first winter of owning it. They then built a pair of naturally aspirated 540ci engines and later added multiport fuel injection. Initially the boat was equipped with high performance Bravo drive units. “Our focus was getting more out of the boat by building top-shelf engines that were reliable, not solely focused on horsepower, while upgrading the controls and safety features, being sure it maintained rough water durability – a fairly unique combination”. The first 3 years with this setup worked out well, but after the first set of replacement gears were installed, the drives’s XR lower gears never held up long enough to break them in after that. In a quest to balance the equation of reliability he sought out upgrades. Researching what others had done, Jeff came to the conclusion that a pair of IMCO drives was the answer. Once installed the results of his efforts was the reliability he sought, but it came with a price - top speed reduction that so many boaters see but don’t like to talk about. “Over the last year, with my fairly conservative power and IMCO drives, I was merely keeping up with boats with 300 less horsepower and stock Bravo drives. I wasn’t going to worry about my drives anymore, but I knew I would either need to bump horsepower to the limits of the IMCO drives or just attack the problem from the source and keep the power the same and make the drives more efficient.”

In Tibbe’s readings and conversations he had heard about the Arneson Surface Drives and how they provide both reliability and a speed increase over a Bravo style drive unit. Tibbe had also read the uninformed opinions of how they will they work on a non-stepped boat bottom such as his 32’ Active Thunder. Emailing or calling Arneson to ask the questions directly was the easy first step.

Tibbe spoke with Rik Wimp of Arneson Surface Drives. It just so happened that Arneson has a customer with a very similar boat, a 1996 32’ Active Thunder with ASD6 drives on it owned by Bret Jones out of Jonhsburg, IL. Wimp forwarded Jones’ contact information to Tibbe and let the two parties communicate one on one for an unbiased opinion. Although Jones has smaller power than Tibbe, Jones had a significantly better top speed than Tibbe’s current setup. “I was fortunate to talk with Bret, given he had already done the Arneson conversion on basically the same hull.”

Tibbe contacted Wimp again but this time with much more curiosity and with a lot more questions about the setup process, gear ratios, installation heights and so on.

After discussions with multiple owners of Arneson boats around the country, Jeff, co-founder of the newly formed West Michigan Offshore powerboat club, knew switching to Arnesons would make the difference and allow him to keep up with some of the bigger and faster boats in the WMO event schedule. “From an engineering perspective, I knew the Bravo style drives drag the entire lower unit through the water, lower gear set and all. Arnesons have the advantage of performing the gear reduction above the surface of the water with oversized gears (a luxury normal outdrives don’t have) – leaving only the skeg in the water”

Tibbe made the decision to purchase the Arneson #7M Kits. He sold off his current outdrives, HP transom assemblies, extension boxes, and steering first and recovered a considerable amount of money back towards the purchase of the Arnesons reducing the overall cost for the conversion.

After working on the conversion to Arnesons Tibbe put the boat in the water for his 2015 boating season debut on Saturday June, 6th and things went GREAT. Adjusting to the different style the cleaver propellers require to get on plane, Tibbe quickly mastered the techniques and ran the boat in the rough Lake Michigan waters. “The leverage the drives have on the boat was a huge improvement that I wasn’t expecting. With side by side engines, I was used to the boat acting stern-heavy in waves, the boat now acts balanced almost as if the engines were staggered. The boat rides on rails and is always predicable – I have all the benefits I heard about with Arnesons with none of the perceived issues.” Jeff’s wife Meg was surprised at the difference in the boat: “When we decided to make the Arneson conversion, after so many frustrations with our previous drives, I was seriously AMAZED at the difference in how the Active Thunder handles and carries on the water. Any fears I originally had with traveling well over 90 on the water have diminished, which is a fantastic feeling.”

Although Tibbe has only tried one set of props so far, the results are already proving out. The boat has gained 15mph of everyday speed with a few extra mph in the right conditions. Results couldn’t be better. Steering is great, handling is great, and no significant difference in docking. Did we mention he now goes FASTER too! “The Arneson conversion has brought me back from worrying every time I touch the throttles about drive gears to enjoying the boat and just being on the water.”

Great read!

Cool boat, cooler people!

Nice!

So Awesome!

Great info! Good looking drives!

jeff & ron's boat rides real nice & goes pretty darn good with the power they run. we have run a couple of club events with them & i had the pleasure to be pulled in by them once a number of years ago after running out of fuel at the pier head. lol. always loved surface drives, i have had one on my 19' baron since the late 80's. the only thing i have done to it is change the oil & the prop shaft seals when a ski rope wrapped around it. here's to another great boating season.

todd

Thanks Rik and everyone else for the kind words! This has been a great experience and a lot of fun to convert.

We took a 3600 Nor-tech SC from a 525 EFI, Bravo XR with boxes and upgraded to 775 HP with IMCO SCX's. The speed increased from mid 90's to 109 mph but the boat was a lot to handle above 100 mph becoming a drivers boat that without notice would bow steer so bad that pulling out of the throttles was the only way to save it. We found this was caused by the larger SCX lower dragging (acting like a tab) in the water with the centerline being 1 5/8" above the bottom of the boat. This year we decided to switch the boat to Arneson drives. We set the boat up with the props turning out because that was how the boat came with XR's and mixed answers about which was better. The first test drive was short as the boat felt a little loose above 100 mph and a oil line issue with the starboard engine. We switched the drives to turn in and retested the boat. This test took us to the 120 mark with a feeling that the boat was on rails something I have never felt in a V hull at top speed. It was the most fun I have ever had with my clothes on giving me back the "I can't wait to go boating" feeling I had lost several year ago. 3rd time out I bought the boat.

Nice, Brian! For me the SCX drives turned outward was pretty much on rails, inward was a bit loose, but there was porpoising in the 3000-3400 range with both directions of rotation. Just like bravo's the boat seemed very stern-heavy in waves. I had to run a lot of tab in rough water - killing even more speed.

The Arneson drives have no porpoising whatsoever (I've only run the boat with props turned inward), and I rarely use tabs except for slight adjustments in waves. I was also surprised at how well the boat handles and steers on plane, no difference from Bravo's.

Great upgrade with great results!

Do you care to mention the cost of the ASD upgrade? Seems it never gets mentioned even when Rik gets asked directly.

Not to mention all the hardware looks bad ass back there! :D :cool:

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The bravo conversion makes it stupid simple.......no moving of the engines since the standoff box has room inside it for the velvet drive trans.....and the stand off box has the bravo bolt pattern so no cutting of the transom....its basically labor for the swap once you have the parts.....this is assuming the modify bug doesn't bite you and you start changing things like color matching the hardware or chroming things :D

Congrats on a great upgrade!

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The conversion, while pretty straightforward, is honestly not quite that easy.

The hole pattern is different - the Arneson Extension box could eat my old IMCO extension boxes, so the new hole pattern is much bigger (a good thing when you see the size of the hardware... EVERYTHING is overbuilt - which is fantastic). The actual cutout inside the extension box does get a bit bigger too since the BAM transmission doesn't quite fit in the Bravo hole. I also had to do some modifying to the extension box and inner bracket due to stringer interference issues that were unavoidable.

The other note is that while the engines didn't move forward, the angle of the engines typically have to change for most transom angles - this means modifying the motor mounts and tailpipes.

All that being said, these changes are needed to optimize for the Arneson design. The end result is worth these changes.

The angle change was a much bigger concern than the amount I needed to drop the engines. My solution was to change the angles of the tailpipes. I have CMI double wall tails with miter angles... so it wasn't as easy as a single wall, but there was no need to buy new tails. The angle the engine changes is also usually up in the front, down in the back - 3 degrees in my case. Even though I have large offshore oil pans, I didn't need to drop the engines more than 1" and I had the room to do it.

Because of this angle and where the headers are located geometrically relative to the transom, if you actually do need to cut on the tail pipes, they end up being shorter to accomplish the same goal - so buying new is not necessary. A lot of guys send them out to Hardin or Stainless Marine to cut and re-weld if necessary.

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I can't really answer what the cost to re-rig is since I did it all myself. There is certainly a significant amount of work in making this change - and I'd be happy to walk you through what it took if that helped. (PM me your info, I can talk you through it).

No worries - and I absolutely agree with your comment on not being a direct bolt-on conversion.

There is no such thing as plug and play in this industry.....like Tibbstoy2 mentioned "the end result is worth the changes". For us the docking and steering were also greatly improved but the piece of mind not having to worry about when the drive is going to come apart is priceless.

We started our second conversion last week. Though not required we are starting with a clean slate.

Yeah - the docking thing is worth noting too... the BAM transmissions making the actual thrust happen a lot quicker than bravo's... (bravo's have a delay because of the way the clutch works). I've found that back up thrust is a bit different with the cleaver props, but that's not an Arneson thing, just an SSM propeller characteristic.

Wholeheartedly agree with Brian on not worrying about failures... I remember checking XR/XZ/IMCO SC drive magnets after every ride hoping to run the boat another day without pulling the prop shafts out... makes me want to throw up just recalling it.

How do those exhaust tips work for you? I was thinking about trying to fabricate something similar to divert exhaust under water, like a turn-down. But still want the option to go loud if I want.

My bad....they sure do make it sound very simple on the site:
http://new.arneson-industries.com/bravo-conversion

I love them... I used to have CMI sound elimination system mufflers and they were pretty good, but they wore out! CMI didn't design them with rebuildable bushings... so over time, they just rattled all the stainless steel slots loose... We fabricated these by laser cutting stainless sheet, rolled them and welded them up. We welded in the pin supports (so that the pin's not riding on the stainless wall) and added room for bronze bushings.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Y...thmufflers.JPG
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-9...no/closeup.JPG

The other thing that worked out well was making sure the flapper sealed just off vertical (so the plate is more of an oval than round) - making it self-stop when it's tight.

For me, it's the only way to have dry exhaust to the tip to avoid reversion and still have the silent choice effect. The boat is a real sleeper in the channels. The beginning of this video gives an idea:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/115888891526496766471/albums/6039576953672683329/6039576953716231154

Looks like a 38' Top Gun!!

I agree Chris, great people

So 50K in parts from you, then props and the all important rigging/labor.......

order the boat with arnesons in the first place and save the hassle lol!

Yes for list pricing that is correct and it's a relative cost to what the options are out there from competitors products.

Without reading all the posts/info available I ask..what power is the conversion rated for? They look great!

I don't understand the logic. I'm not knocking the product(Arneson). 50 grand plus props.... What's the boat worth before? after? No offense to anyone.

+1

Cool Factor CK NO Drive issues CK Roost CHECK!!!

Questions Not

If you are in it for the "worth" you wouldn't understand.

Worth? Logic and boats is relative to common sense and women.

As for the investment, it does at least have a pay back in the way of better fuel mileage, a faster cruise speed, a higher top end speed, better handling and FAR less maintenance.

As for worth, well if the boat needs new drives then it's not going to be worth less than the boat would be if you purchased a Bravo or Bravo derivative from a Band Aid company that cost you speed, handling, fuel mileage, reliability and more $$ up front than the Arneson Kits cost.

At the end of the day, weekend or holiday, it's about boating anyways; not working on your boat because it's broken and your wife and family are upset because the boat is down in the first day of the holiday weekend and your spending your time working on the Bravo's and not spending it with your family having fun..

Does the kits come with something like a bravo drill jig? You know for the cut out and new mounting holes.

They come with a drill template if that's what you mean? It has no reference to a current Bravo hole as the Bravo holes can be up/down from boat to boat and even same boat to same boat with a different Bravo style can have a different X, (ITS, Standoff Box, etc..) and for the Arneson it has no relation to the current X dimension as I only want the Arneson put in a location relative to the boats bottom.

Once that is set, it's fairly easy to do so, it's all plug and play from that point forward. The Standoff boxes are pre-drilled for the hydraulic's and the drive, the backing plate is the rear engine mount which sets the engines alignment and height making it fairly simple to do the install as there's no gimbal bearing to align just install the bolts and your set.