Toying with the idea..
 

Ok i am running a mild 540 with a single Imco Xtreme SC drive wit the low water pickup. The problem is that the boat is stored and used in Lake havasu Arizona, to where we have the infamous sand bars, to where lies the problem.

When the boat is parked at the local sandbar the water levels fluctuate and sometimes the bottom of the drive nose cone hits and gets dipped into the sand and mud.

Here lies my dilema, prior to the efi conversion i was running a blown motor with an intercooler. The water was being picked up from two pickups placed on the bottom of the boat, for the engine and the intercooler.

Has anyone ran a pickup and bypassesd the normal drive pickup. I believe that it will still pickup water and circulate through the housing of the drive acting like a drive shower, while still providing enough water to pass through the engine and exhaust. :drink:

Thanks in advance for any input.

Krum,
the best way to do this is to take the hose that goes to the water pump ( or sea strainer) and plumb it so it dumps back out on the drive. Put some restriction on it, so the water flow thru the cap still functions as it would if the system is intact. I believe just blocking it off, would restrict flow thru the drive which is part of the natural cooling built into it. Reducing the hose to a #10 fitting, pointing back at the drive, I think would do it. Lets see if any others have done it with the SC. I have done it on Merc XR's with great results.

Hope this helps.

D*ck

Mr Gadgets

I am running a crossover setup that that exits splits the water through a splitter to the exhausts. I belive if i went your way i would have to switch to a water cross over that has an outlet that would normally go to the thermostat housing.

Do you know what i mean?

Like I've said before, the quarter inch water tube running up the drive doesn't amount to a hill of beans compared to the whole leg of the outdrive being immersed in water, just run a drive shower and block off the drive water pick up somewhere. If a drive depends on a water line running up it for cooling, explain how a Trs drive can last so long. It has no provision for a water pickup in the drive.

This Trs is 25 years old and still working just fine.

Cuda the TRS drive holds 34 gallons of oil and yours looks like mine and it is about 1 foot into the water.....and the bravo holds a lot less then that :D:D

Here's an interesting way of cooling the drive. I run a transom mounted water pick-up used only for cooling the engines and exits at the very tip of the tailpipes. Then I use the low water pick-up that is built within my XR drives. I now have the IMCO's -2" shorties which uses the same lower water pick-up system as the stock Merc XR lower. Anyway, the water enters in, goes through the drive, then sprays back out via a 45* -12 or -10 Areoquip fitting I have mounted on the transom of my boat and spray directly on the drive's top caps. Mr. Gadgets then also drilled a hole in the gimble/bellows housing of my drive so that water will also cool the top gear of my drive. In the first picture you can see the 45* Arequip fitting and if you look closely you can see part of the YELLOW transom mounted pick-up at the bottom. Mr. Gadgets can probably explain it better than me---he did the mods on my drives...

Sorry, had some problems posting pictures...whew!

Krumb,
you lost me!! Mark's boat is the one I am reffering to. The water pickup from the drive goes to your seawater pump. Disconnect it from the pump and reroute it overboard, pointing at the drive for extra cooling. Then connect your transom pickup to the seawater pump.. This allows water through the drive and pours it back on the drive. Just a bit of added cooling. On Marks, we did another trick to help cooling.. Pm me if you want more info on that.

My believe is that even with water running thru the Bravo drive and a drive shower, they still run too hot. Unless you idle around with it in the water. At WOT they produce heat and that distorts things. I see evidence of it when I tear down a drive.
In most cases, the drives live, but in higher HP situations, you need all the help you can get. One customer in question is running 1400hp thru an XR and it is living at this point. Tear down is often and with the lastest setup, it looked pretty good inside. External cooling and filtering is the ticket I believe, but it depends on where the drive oil is taken from to be effective.

More to come on that later..

D*dk

I bought an Alpha one time that didn't even have an impeller in the drive, it had obviously been on a boat with transom pickups and a seawater pump. There's no way that little tube running up the drive does chit to cool the drive.

I thought we were talking Bravo's here?? Or did I miss something?