XR With Water Block Off Plate
 

I think my drive is taking water into the bellows. There aren't any holes in the bellows that I can see, but the drive has a Sportmaster lower with a low water pickup and a block off plate on the inside of the transom. I use an through hull pick up on one of the sponsons then to my sea strainer. My question is where does all the water pressure go when your at wot? I think it's blowing past the o-ring on and getting into the bellows. I was thinking of tapping a hole in the side of the drive so the water pressure could be directed out. I thought of pulling the hose off but it seem like that would direct all that water right into the transom plate. I've seen guys tap a fitting and make a drive shower out it and it looks like this would be the easiest way to do it.

One more question, since I have a Sporty lower, they have a plate bolted to the upper where a normal lower would have the anode and a drive shower attached to it. This plate has my drive shower and an anode on it. If I rig the shower up like I want to, do I still need this plate? I don't care about the anode, I don't leave my boat in the water.

You do want the water flowing through the drive since it cools the drive from the inside.

Either get rid of the block off plate and connect a hose to the original fitting and make a through transom fitting to get rid of the water. Or do as you said - tap a fitting (or one on each side to get a bigger area) in the drive. Either one you can use to build a drive shower.

You either need to let the water flow through the drive and dump it out the side or better yet onto the top of the drive or you can tap the side of the drive like I did and feed your drive shower. I actually had a dump out the side as well. You need to flow some water through the drive to help cool it.

Thats exactly what I was going to do. I set up a fitting with a dump on the inside of the transom before but this would be half the work.

Now, when I set this shower up, does anybody know if I still need the plate that my original drive shower is bolted too? I wonder if it serves any purpose. Here's a pic.

You still need that plate to prevent cavitation.

Alright, I'll leave the plate. The fitting was cake to tap and set up, I used the same line that was already there. There was maybe 1/2 hour into it. Now I just need make new plate that doesn't have a hole in it, should be easy to copy and cut piece of aluminum. I supposed it wouldn't hurt anything but I don't like the way it looks.