Newbie question: explain drive showers to me
 

Hi,

I've seen advertisements for "drive showers." I understand that these devices shower the drive with water to keep it cool. Is this overkill? With the cooling pickup for the motor in the bottom of the drive, isn't there enough water flowing through the drive to keep it cool? When do you need one of these, should all stern drives have them or only for go fast boats that sustain high speeds?

Chuck

I think they should be standard equipment. You can never run your equipment cool enough.

With the top half of your drive completely out of the water, it can heat up quickly, even though the engine cooling water is passing up through the drive.

It's cheap insurance.

Big cruisers will heat up drives just as quickly as a performance boat will. They should have them too, imo.

Heat kills.

I agree with Baja. They are cheap insurance, SO easy to install and they look good too! I recommend the simreks. Go to www.driveshowers.com for in depth info.

chuck21401, I personally don't think it is over kill. The water pickup in the outdrive does 1 thing, and that is to deliver water to the motor. It is only about 3/4 inch tub that sends the water up to the sea pump. The Bravo out drive holds about 3 quarts of oil and builds up a lot of heat. Even if you only have 300hp you are still spinning it 4500rpm and building almost the same amount of heat as 600hp with a larger prop spinning 4500rpm.
Years ago when I had a 5.0l family ski boat, I was cruising along at about 20mph and the upper gear set let go and broke the housing. I had to buy a complete Alpha upper drive, which wasn't cheap. When the mechanic looked at it he told me there was nothing wrong with the bearings and that it was just fate that a tooth broke off one of the gears.
I have later found out that without a drive shower, these build up enough heat (280-300 degree) to break down the oil, then gears and bearings start to break.
Mercruiser says that if you change the oil at the specified maintenance interval you shouldn't have a problem, but I think they sell millions $$$$ worth of drive parts every year and don't want to fix the problem and installing drive showers. Also they would have to charge more to cover the cost.
So I think $100 drive shower is a very good insurance policy.

Drive shower = $100 bandaid to keep the poorly engineered bravo upper cool. Needed because of its small lube capacity, weak upper tower and housing. Not sure if it really helps keep drives alive longer though.
My $0.02
Gary

Look at the drive uppers on some older boats without drive showers, they are usually covered in chalky white residue. The residue is chalk and other minerals cooked out of the water by the heat of the upper unit, it gets that hot!

I highly recommend drive showers, especially the billet cap types. I also recommend golden showers, but that's for another posting.

Attached is a pic of some Smirek drive showers I recently installed. Took all of 10 minutes per side. I agree with the comments above. Cheap insurance. In my book, anything you can do to shore up the weak link in the equation is money well spent. My $0.02

I feel the same way.... It's bull**** engineering from the factory that some bandaid approach has to be done out in the field.

Ok, so with the above in mind, is it as essential to use drive showers on Cobras? I swear these bastards hold 100 ounces of lube each.

My entire garbage can is filled with empty merc high perf bottles. Took about 3 bottles each Cobra drive.
(Oh yeah, and 33 ounces for my little boat with the alpha).

How about a drive shower for an old TRS? Do they make them or is it pretty much a universal fit?

Wow! 100 oz per each drive... is that all?... SSM III's hold almost 2 gallons each... :crazy:

Look at the supply water path in the drive. Water does not go thru the top of the drive or the sides, so it is not cooled from the water supply.
Kinda explains why showers dump water on the top cap, and also the sides of the drive by the Simrek models.

OMC Cobra drives have much better oil circulation top to bottom than Mercs and don't suffer as much from the high temps. Plus the larger capacity is also a help. I've never seen a Cobra with chalky residue on the upper.
Say what you will about Cobras and King Cobras , but they DID have some good points over Mercruiser. This and the sea water pump being two of them.

;)

bford1, I've also wondered about showers for my TRS drives. I've yet to come across any, the only ones I've found are for Alpha and Bravo.

Anyone know where or if these are available?

Thanks,
Brian

Why do you think there is such a market for after drives on high performance boats IMCO's SC, BMAX, etc..

They all have some type of water jacketed cases.

my .02

I got one. I wouldn't have an outdrive without one.

You should get one for all of the above mentioned reasons.

they do have differences

go to http://www.driveshowers.com/

and the halo will fit trs drives. you can check it out on the webpage

Has anyone seen a "heat related" failure on a drive? Sure they fail but I have yet to see a failure that was due to heat.

Why are showers so important on a mass produced drive like the Bravo but not on a 3, 3A, 5, or 6 drive?

I personally do run them but I really wonder if it's just good marketing on the part of shower manufacturers.

Never had an OMC drive, but I suspect with the volume of lube in my TRSs or Speedmasters, I would run out of gas before I could heat it all up.
Gary