Cost of 454 to 540 upgrade?
02-08-2008, 07:23 AM
#101
No problem Jeff. Both guys are highly qualified. I only live about 20 miles from Mr. Gadgets (he built my drives). Articfriends is an excellent "test bed" for the Bravo One drive! He goes out and personally tests (beats the crap out of them) these drives with 1000+hp over and over and then reports his findings right here on OSO.
02-10-2008, 03:32 AM
#102
Platinum Member
Platinum Member
iTrader: (1)
Jeff1000,just to clarify things,although I do work on drives and can and will install mercruiser gears that I have done surface treatments to for customers and I do build lowers,I'm not in the drive building business like Max Machine Worx or Dick Tryce. They can take your core upper housing then bore it out for a steel tower (I don't have that capability) then rebuild it with new internal xr style parts. Dick Tryce has his own steel tower and blend of Merc & Imco parts that seem to be working for his customers. In the case of the Max Machine Worx,they use Merc gears but upgrade the bearings to stronger ones,billet upper shaft,vert shaft and prop shaft. They also use a 1" thick top cap thats billet aluminum,it locates the upper gear very accurately which keeps it from moving around. They have billet yokes,seal retainers,prop carriers and a slew of other parts.As they have found a failure point they have addressed it with a better part. In a fairly light boat the stuff can live with upwards of 1000 hp BUT the cost of these upgrades exceed the cost of a brand new xr drive even with you providing a upper and lower casing that are intact so unless your at a extreme power level its not a cost effective solution. This is what I run on my boat and I have had fairly good life from there parts combination with the exception of lower gears. Thats where I have taken it a step further with the gear treatments. The treated gears have a considerably longer service life if installed properly and broken in with decent run-in time. In the near future Bob Madera and myself hope to have a set of billet lower gears on the market to fill the void of people running big power who are un-able to make stock gears live a reasonable amount of time,Smitty
02-10-2008, 09:52 AM
#103
Registered
Platinum Member
Jeff1000,just to clarify things,although I do work on drives and can and will install mercruiser gears that I have done surface treatments to for customers and I do build lowers,I'm not in the drive building business like Max Machine Worx or Dick Tryce. They can take your core upper housing then bore it out for a steel tower (I don't have that capability) then rebuild it with new internal xr style parts. Dick Tryce has his own steel tower and blend of Merc & Imco parts that seem to be working for his customers. In the case of the Max Machine Worx,they use Merc gears but upgrade the bearings to stronger ones,billet upper shaft,vert shaft and prop shaft. They also use a 1" thick top cap thats billet aluminum,it locates the upper gear very accurately which keeps it from moving around. They have billet yokes,seal retainers,prop carriers and a slew of other parts.As they have found a failure point they have addressed it with a better part. In a fairly light boat the stuff can live with upwards of 1000 hp BUT the cost of these upgrades exceed the cost of a brand new xr drive even with you providing a upper and lower casing that are intact so unless your at a extreme power level its not a cost effective solution. This is what I run on my boat and I have had fairly good life from there parts combination with the exception of lower gears. Thats where I have taken it a step further with the gear treatments. The treated gears have a considerably longer service life if installed properly and broken in with decent run-in time. In the near future Bob Madera and myself hope to have a set of billet lower gears on the market to fill the void of people running big power who are un-able to make stock gears live a reasonable amount of time,Smitty
Good luck in your quest for the triple digits. Bob tells me good things about your experiments.
