upgrade xr for 750 ponies
 

lads,american drive service . has talked a bit with me . says need stage 4 upgrade for my power .. for this upgrade, 8 k plus my low hrs xr drives ..any other options out there. . looking for best bang for my money , any good or bad reviews with ads ,, looking for some input fellas .. thanks rob

Rob we have had excellent success with Max Machine shafts with similar HP in a 30' boat. Worth a call and I have personally been in their shop.

at that price you could buy imco scx,s,imo the best cone clutch drive on the planet.

I wouldn't waste a dime on upgrading any bravo gear based drive, either have spare drives and rebuild (cheaply) as needed or upgrade drives.

There are multiple good and bad reviews of AADS as with most companies, I dont believe they are night and day better or worse then the competition (Mr. Gadgets, Max Machine, Bravo Shop, etc.)

I'm going to agree with everyone else here, don't waste your time on Bravo stuff. All AADS does is charge you a lot of money for a longer tower. Shafts are all the same, bearings all the same, gears all the same, and in the end it's going to break the same. Now I do believe they claim they make their own special shafts, and treat the gears, but I doubt is does much if anything. They don't give you any comparisons on how much it takes to break a bravo clutch shaft vs theirs. IMO, it's all marketing.

Take your money and do one of two things. Switch to the IMCO SCX or convert to an SSM drive. With my 38 Scarab, I'm running 1000 hp, and I had IMCO SC drives and ITS boxes off my last boat I could have used. IMO the IMCO SC is better than anything AADS does, but it's still a Bravo when all is said in done. So I sold the drives and boxes and bought a complete SSM V set up with zero hours on it since it was rebuilt from TnT. It's night an day stronger than a Bravo, and I'm sure a lot stronger than an IMCO. Depending if you are going to run an SC lower or an SCX lower on the SCX upper, you are easily going to have $30k invested. On the other hand, you could get a very nice SSM package for possibly half that.

The IMCO is obviously plug and play other than changing the helmet on the gimbal, whereas the SSM you are going to have to move your motor forward for the transmission. As far as parts availability on SSM stuff, everything is still being made, so it's far from an obsolete drive.

At $8K a pop plus your XR's I'd sell the XR's and put that money towards SCX's.

A complete SCX drive is around 18K a drive give or take. Now it you have SC lowers already they will mount to an SCX with a special coupler. Then you would only have to spend $11k on the upper.

750hp would be a ticking time bomb in front of a Bravo , best bet is go with SCX and new lower designed case

I wish I'd kept my lightning with my Konrad. Pisses me off every day !!!!!

Keep your current low hour xrs and install Drive Guardians for 5K. Just saved you some money! In all seriousness we're installing one now, not sure how much they help.