Like I mentioned above...they are great drives..set up is a little more, reliability is much better...Hustler is the largest boat manufacture of Go-Fast that uses them and I believe Nortech is second..which uses them on 15+ diesel applications per year. The myth of no reversing and tough to spin your boat around at the docks is not the truth..when set up properly I will take these any day of the week over the Merc stuff.

i see a set of kaamas in classifid for sale do thay have drop boxes or are the drives in line with the crank i had thought about them convert an older datona with twins

I'm not saying that they are bad,90% of all boats sold are 18 to 25' runabouts and family boats, not your go fast boats that can use a surface drive. I don't think they would have worked out on a 22' bayliner. those of us who like to go fast make up a small percentage of the boating industry.

Not true! That's my point, they seem superior in every application. Here is a great article from 1980, the test boat had a 270 hp engine. As far as cost they're on par with an XR set up but stronger. If I was ordering a new boat I would instist it came with an Arneson. Here is the article

http://www.howardarneson.com/articles/article7r.asp

Fixx
 

Here's a 18' donzi with a serface drive..you need to check this one out.

http://www.donzi.net/forums/showthread.php?t=61317

Now that is really cool! Maybe next year I'll seriously think about a used arneson. That would open up a lot of possibliitys with my engine. I could spin that thing to 7 grand and not worry at all about the drive. Not to mention they just look cool hauling butt across the lake!

Fixx
 

Keep in mind that boat took alot of r&d work to work properly on that hull,when it was all said and done that boat went 125mph +...i dont know what the top speed was but it was quick and fast..under the 6th pic theirs some video's of it running..

I fail to see your correlation here. Please help me connect the dots.

First you say “for most applications the surface drive would not work, you needed the prop down in the water and tucked under to get the boat on plane” then you comment on the volume of boat sales to performance enthusiast.

The size of the boat has little to do with the use of an Arneson as the real argument you should have made is that the smaller boats are a budget boat and the price constraints do not allow for the cost of an Arneson in comparison to the less expensive package that they are currently getting from Mercury.

As for getting on plane due to the need to be tucked under I do not know what to say. Being a surface drive, none of them including Mercury’s can be trimmed under and last I looked they all get on plane.

But maybe I just don’t understand the dots?

are you saying your elevator does not go to the top floor..:drink:

what dots? take surface drives out of the picture. the comment was directed to your standard family boat, with a merc, volvo, omc. what ever, has to have the drive trimed all the way down to get on plane, which is about a 7 deg. past neutral (tucked under), its the way they are designed. I seen the artical from the 80's and it sounds great, but 30 years later it is still only used in limited installations, why? there has got to be more to it than merc monopoly. sorry if I ruffled any feathers.