I just had my picture restriction removed I think.

Here is mine. When trailer running it, I have 2 threaded open holes on the lower. One at the rear pointing towards the front of the boat, and one on the bottom of the lower pointing straight down. Water in either comes out the other it appears. Should both be open like that for normal use?

Were the E3s what came on it? Given your 4k rpm, that was likely affected by ratio change. E2s would help you get your rpm up closer to where you likely want to be.

Your drive looks to be an R (definitely not A) although like 1800T pointed out there were earlier S's. I generally dont mention them as they were/are few and far between based on everything I gathered over the years. The S's dont share many of the internals that the Rs and the As do either.

Correct on water inlets. Duel pickup as you described. Unless you are having problems, leave them alone

More great info - made me want to go look at the lower I bought from Doug Russell, as I could not recall if had a sub letter. Turns out It was an S lower (but who knows maybe they work with everything)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Volvo-Penta...-tel:rk:1:pf:0

Is there a recommended place to get a set of E2 props - would like to try and see if makes a difference in MPH and plane speed - thanks again everyone for all the info.

The S, R, and A lower housings are all the same, so yes, they bolt right up. As for the props, I would keep an eye out for a used set on ebay or such. New prop sets are not cheap and since you dont know exactly what you will end up with performance wise its a bit of a risk.

I like these volvo drives way better than any other DP on the market.

My knowledge on volvo drives outside of the DPXs gets a little more limited. I think your answer depends somewhat on what you are going to apply the drive to. Volvo made a DPR drive for a while which was very stout. The DPH drive is also supposed to very strong. One of the things that made the DPXs and Rs desirable over all other Volvo drives, they are the (2) that had the built in hydraulic steering which was a very nice feature. The Volvo drives across the board al shift better than bravos, in my opinion. I feel Volvos engineering and machine work is better than Mercs and that contributes to a better/more durable drive overall.

What I can tell you about the regular DP drive, is my next door neighbor has a 22 Chris Craft Launch with a DP, which he runs pretty hard for what it is, on a regular basis and he put almost 800 hrs on the drive, without ever having to do ANYTHING, other than change oil

a question for the dpx savy - can you run mixed props? i.e. E3 rear and E2 front - would that be like splitting gear ratios or just not work?

No, you canīt mix props. You need to change both props if changing to a different size.

I have a different take on this. Yes, you can mix props, it is just a question of what the end result is. There is the potential for poor harmonics which could damage the drives and/or props themselves. This is not a given though. Plenty of guys mix prop pitches/diameters on duo-prop drives with good results, but applications are not necessarily similar, as in non-performance versus performance.

sometimes, there is only one way to find out..........