Low water pick-up?
 

From previous posts I have read there does not seem to be any positives to the low water pick-ups on the XR drives. Other members have said that they will pick up additional sand or mud in low water conditions. Is there anything that can be done to plug the holes? Why did Merc make the double intakes on XR?

From what I was told when I had to replace my drive with the newer dual pickup, it is because the dual will work with all applications. Versus Merc stocking 2 different designs for different boats. A cost effective thingy.

The low water pick up was designed to handle the higher x dimensions on the cats and so forth. You can not plug these up. You can put a water pick up on your boat and block of the water from your outdrive. Not uncommon

Confused...

In the trailering position, the low water p/u will be higher, therefore out of the sand and mud????? Wouldn't this help the problem, not hurt it????

I am just starting to deal with this situation - needed to replace the whole set-up due to a shallow sand bar.... Ouch!!! :crazy:

I believe now Mercury only offers the drive housings in dual pick-up config. I was trying to get a set with only mid pickups and was told they are no longer available.

Thanks for the advice....

sand and dirt does suck - pun intended...

Let's see leave the drive up and swallow sand into the engine or put it down and ruin your outdrive steering from the wave movement... :(

Sooo, will the dual pickup work in high x dimensions? I can't imagine the use of the lower set if the drive would just suck air through the higher set...what's the point?

it's not sucking air! the lower PU is providing so much pressure that the upper is releaving some of it in some applications.

Audacity, I figured it must work similar, or what would be the point. Would you advise using a 2-3" higher x with DWP? I guess that's a stupid question, I would just need to check water pressure.....Just wondering if this was well engineered for this purpose.

I,m glad I asked this question. I had no idea the problem is as bad as it seems from everyone's posts. I will be much more carefull when beaching in the future.

formulafastech,

Did the same thing. I never had a boat with low water pickups until the '33. Didn't know it had 'em either until leaving a sandbar where we hang out. Hoses we're packed solid. Took about 8 hours to get everything cleaned out. I wanted to switch to mid pickups, but as I posted earlier, they seem to be no longer available. Guess I'll have to walk the boat on from a lot further out:D

Wow.... This sucks...

What is the bottom line... Plug the lower holes????

Go back to old technology without the lower water pick-ups. This would add some fixes - the new drive doesn't have my old nose cone - so add the cone and change the pick-up at the same time.

formulafastech

Yep, 8 hours. The joy of twins :D. From what I'm reading, I guess sea-strainers would be useless. I'm going to keep my eyes open for a pair of used housings. Anybody got any?

you're right about that jeff, only i think i would say even out of gear can do about as much damage (on a bravo setup any way) sense the cv joint is before the clutch it's always spinning when ever the engine is.

I have 2 2001 empty lower cases, I think I'm keeping one because I have the Bravo performance with low water pick up but will sell the other for 200

Drill a LWP housing?
 

Seems like you should be able to drill a set of mid pickups into a LWP housing, since the water passages are the same. Since you are pulling most of your water in through the LWP at speed, the mid pickups are just acting as a relief valve of sorts, so you shouldn't need the "vanes" that you see on the stock cases. At one time I was in the market for a Bravo drive, and one of the sellers whom I was talking to said that he could plug the LWP and drill a set of mid pickups by using a stock mid-pickup Bravo as a template. Ended up buying a different drive, so I never saw it done.