Thanks C-Spray,

I'm very excited about this new drive. I want to be able to use all the horsepower we have on tap.

It's refreshing to see an alternative for the TRS crowd!!!

Kurt

Hey guys,

Last Saturday I hit the road with my boat in tow for the Konrad facility in Hudson, Wisconsin. I arrived at the plant Monday morning for a week of testing and installation of the Konrad 540 drives on my '89 Top Gun.

Monday morning Ken Konrad gave me a tour of the plant. I was just blown away at the quality in workmanship at this facility! Nothing and I mean nothing is compromised in building the Konrad drive. Only the best materials and techniques are chosen for the components and it was obvious the employees take great pride in building the best stern drive possible. The US NAVY is Konrad's biggest customer and when you are selling to the NAVY, failure is not an option when peoples lives are at risk if a drive explodes. Also, I was very amazed at how happy the workforce is at the Konrad operation, a true sign of a good leader. Konrad sure has assembled a dream team of engineers for his designs and runs his business like a well-oiled machine.

I've had more fun than I could of ever imagined working with this crew all week and we got quite a bit accomplished over the past 5 days.

After we established baseline tests, we removed the TRS drives and prepared to install the 540 drive onto the Merc TRS transom assembly. The install went very smooth, consisting of removing the TRS drive and the Merc bellhousing. The Konrad drive bellhousing has an improved drive lube coupler and is a much stronger unit. Installation was very straightforward and can be done by most anyone with some mechanical know how.

The next step in this project was to remove the TRS transom assemblies and replace them with the Konrad transom unit. I was amazed at how smooth this swap actually went. Since my boat has solid motor mount plates, all we had to do was remove all the 3/4" transom assy nuts inside the boat and we were able to remove the assembly without pulling the engines. It did take a little effort but the old TRS units pulled right out with minimal hassle.

At this point we were ready to install the 540 transom assemblies. This process was very straightforward. On the Top Gun, drive trim pumps are mounted in front of the motors with long trim hoses. The existing hoses were installed in the new assembly and we were then ready to mount the new drives up the their matching, much stronger transom unit.

If you have ever removed your TRS drives yourself, you know how much of a headache installing a TRS can be. When we installed the new 540 drives, I was shocked to see the drive just fall into the splines with no swearing or wasted time. The Konrad drives are designed to be maintained. Removal and replacement is a breeze with the Konrad unit.

We were able to do the complete install in a day with minimal trouble and we are now ready to run the boat on the St Croix river this morning. I'm heading back to Maine tonight!

It sure has been a fun working with the crew at Konrad. I've had more fun than I could of ever imagined. I feel priveleged to have worked with such a great team all week.

I'll post pictures when I return,

Kurt





:cool: :cool:

wow. have a nice safe trip back home.

Kurt any base line numbers yet with the Konrad stuff?

Jon

That AWESOME Kurt!!!!:D :D

Glad things went smoothly for ya, give me a call later and give me the test numbers:cool: :cool:

Did you ever get hooked up with Troutly for donuts?:p :D :D

Way to go Kurt! Bigger, beefier drives may mean slower speeds. Are you adding another blade to compensate for the higher drive height? So when are we going to 1000 HP engines?

more #'s we need #'s....Kurt glad to here all went so smooth! I want a ride when I get to Maine in June!!will the ice be off the water by then??:p

Hey Kurt:

Thanks for kicking off the 2004 boating season on the St. Croix with us!

Best opener in a quite some time!! Good times for all involved in this project.

I'll send your GPS to your house next week.

Safe travels back home, hope you make it back here soon.

Just got off the phone with Biggus. He said that he can not be happier with the drives. He picked up 4 mph with FLAT calm water. He thinks that with some more set up with the motors and not so sticky water he will pick up more.

Jon

Did you see pics of where he boats? It's always sticky!