I had nothing but problems with mine for 3 years, absolute nightmare. Took 3 years to tell me that the IMCO lower water passage doesn't mate up perfectly with the Bmax. A Merc Lower, or Bmax lower will. I fought water pressure issues, I wish I would have just been told when I purchased the Bmax that the imco wasn't a great option. Would have saved me thousands. I still believe in the drive, just didn't work for my set up. My Bmax upper is for sale for 2500, has like 50 hours on it and 20K into it. Needs to be gone thru. Good luck-

I plan to run one of them with standard SC lowers[/QUOTE]

John made me aware of the water issues right away . I am now selling my -0 imco lowers

If you compare two seasons on the SC lower vs. the new SC lower you would assume it has it's limitations. We'll see how the DriveGuardian contributes.

I thought you could run the Imco SC you just had to do machine work for the water passage to line up and the shaft change to fit the Bmax upper. Maybe I'm wrong but John at he Bravo shop said you could run it.

I called and asked them about it..

The Bmax uses the speedometer water pressure passage for it's cooling water. Both the Merc lower & the Bmax lower have separate inlets and passages for the engine cooling or speedometer..

The Imco lower doesn't have a separate speedometer inlet hole, it's combined with the water pickup. So, the drive cooling water and the engine cooling water flow fight each other, so you could either not have enough engine cooling or not enough drive cooling depending on your seawater pump setup.

There are alot if people out there running sc lowers without issues though.. one of my good friends included

I know of two BMAX's that would be available. One in pieces and one making pieces. Owner bought them new 5 years ago from Bravo Shop. Put on 46BT with 525's. He had so many failures he purchased two new bravo XR's from PBC this year.

Wllks what kind of failures are we talking about here?

Any time you're trying to push a 2 bedroom condo through the water something has to give...........

Have had my boat for 3 yrs & beat on it w/ no issues besides losing reverse towards the end of the past 2 seasons. Separate drive each year. Found it was more on the shop that went thru them just before I bought the boat, than an issue with the drive.. They are finicky to be put back together correctly. We don't have huge water at Cumberland but does get decently rough on the big weekends. 850's & Imco -2's mated to the uppers. Pulled them apart clean, new bearings & good to go. Mine are an older pair that have had some updates to them. Hopefully Back4more see's this post, he had lots of years in my boat with them & did a lot of the work to make them pretty good.